Obama tells struggling nation: 'We don't give up'

[August 06, 2009]  WAKARUSA, Ind. (AP) -- Promising new jobs and money, President Barack Obama on Wednesday told a hurting Midwestern region that its recovery will be like America's: tough but certain.

Obama's second visit as president to a northern Indiana area mired in unemployment reflected political reality. People appreciate hope and the presence of the president, but they want jobs. So Obama came bearing all of those in what amounted to a national economic pep talk.

"Even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we have never surrendered," Obama told a crowd on the steamy factory floor of Monaco RV, whose previous owner went bankrupt. "We don't give up. We don't surrender our fates to chance. We have always endured."

The loudest applause though, came when Obama announced that recreational vehicle company's new owner, Navistar International Corp., had won a $39 million grant to build 400 battery-electric trucks. That means work in an RV-heavy region crushed by the recession, where unemployment has jumped so high so fast that Obama called it "astonishing."

Obama's broader audience was the American public, which has grown more skeptical of the $787 billion stimulus plan that he pushed through Congress just weeks into his term.

At stake for him is the kind of leverage that could influence his success on related matters, mainly health care legislation, as the battle for public opinion heats up during the August congressional recess.

Obama tried to remind people, including Republican critics, that some of the stimulus money was always designed for longer-range infrastructure and energy projects to rebuild the economy.

That tied into his news nugget of the day: the awarding of $2.4 billion in grants toward the production of electric and hybrid cars, part of the stimulus plan. Obama delivered the news in the border region of Indiana and Michigan -- the two states benefiting the most.

He dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to Michigan and other Cabinet emissaries to North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida to help spread the news and the wealth. All of those states, and Indiana, are pivotal electoral states.

Obama relied heavily on a made-in-America message that played well to his audience.

"You know, just a few months ago, folks thought that these factories might be closed for good," he said. "But now they're coming back to life."

Indiana's Elkhart-Goshen area had an unemployment rate of 16.8 percent in June. That's up 10 percentage points from last year. Obama was in Elkhart, just north of Wakarusa, in February when he made a similar get-outside-the-Beltway stop to lobby for the stimulus.

In an interview on Wednesday, Obama said it was fair for his presidency's economic performance to be judged on Elkhart's.

"Our whole goal is to, first of all, rescue the economy from the brink," he told MSNBC. "But the most important thing we're going to have to do is help Elkhart reinvent itself."

When someone in the audience at his speech shouted a thank-you to Obama for coming back with taxpayer-dollar grants, he responded: "You're welcome. Thank the American people."

And during his blow-by-blow recap of his administration's plans to help the economy, Obama spoke confidently about health care. Congress will attempt to pass and reconcile competing plans to overhaul the health care system this fall. A big political fight remains.

"I promise you," Obama said, "we will pass reform by the end of this year."

[Associated Press; By BEN FELLER]

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