Obama sets campaign theme: Middle class at stake

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama ges­tures while speak­ing about the econ­omy, Tues­day, Dec. 6, 2011, at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kan. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

BEN FELLER, KEN THOMAS

Asso­ci­ated Press

OSAWATOMIE, Kan. (AP) — Declar­ing the Amer­i­can mid­dle class in jeop­ardy, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Tues­day out­lined a pop­ulist eco­nomic vision that will drive his re-election bid, insist­ing the United States must reclaim its stand­ing as a coun­try in which every­one can pros­per if pro­vided “a fair shot and a fair share.”

While never mak­ing an overt plea for a sec­ond term, Obama’s offered his most com­pre­hen­sive lines of attack against the can­di­dates seek­ing to take his job, only a month before Repub­li­can vot­ers begin choos­ing a pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee. He also sought to inject some of the long-overshadowed hope that ener­gized his 2008 cam­paign, say­ing: “I believe Amer­ica is on its way up.”

In small-town Osawatomie, in a high school gym where patri­otic bunting lined the bleach­ers, Obama pre­sented him­self as the one fight­ing for shared sac­ri­fice and suc­cess against those who would gut gov­ern­ment and let peo­ple fend for them­selves. He did so know­ing the nation is riven over the ques­tion of whether eco­nomic oppor­tu­nity for all is evaporating.

“Through­out the coun­try, it’s sparked protests and polit­i­cal move­ments, from the tea party to the peo­ple who’ve been occu­py­ing the streets of New York and other cities,” Obama said.

“This is the defin­ing issue of our time,” he said in echo­ing Pres­i­dent Theodore Roosevelt’s famous speech here in 1910.

“This is a make-or-break moment for the mid­dle class and all those who are fight­ing to get into the mid­dle class,” Obama said. “At stake is whether this will be a coun­try where work­ing peo­ple can earn enough to raise a fam­ily, build a mod­est sav­ings, own a home and secure their retirement.”

For Obama, sad­dled with a weak national eco­nomic recov­ery, the speech was a chance to break away from Washington’s incre­men­tal bat­tles and his own small-scale exec­u­tive actions. He offered a sweep­ing indict­ment of eco­nomic inequal­ity and unleashed his own brand of prairie populism.

He spoke for nearly an hour to a sup­port­ive audi­ence, reselling his ideas under the frame­work of “build­ing a nation where we’re all bet­ter off.”

Billed as an impor­tant address that would put today’s eco­nomic debates in con­text, Obama’s speech seemed a bit like two pack­aged into one.

The first was that of the cam­paigner, full of loft and recla­ma­tion of Amer­i­can val­ues. The sec­ond was the gov­ern­ing Obama, who recited his famil­iar jobs agenda, his feud with Con­gress over extend­ing a Social Secu­rity tax cut, even his fight to get his con­sumer watch­dog confirmed.

Obama tied him­self to Roo­sevelt, the pres­i­dent and reformer who came to this town in east­ern Kansas and called for a “square deal” for reg­u­lar Amer­i­cans. Roo­sevelt said then the fight for progress was a con­flict “between the men who pos­sess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess.”

It is a theme Obama is embrac­ing in a mount­ing fight for re-election against Repub­li­cans who, regard­less of the nom­i­nee, will attack his stew­ard­ship of the economy.

One of the lead­ing con­tenders for the GOP nom­i­na­tion, Mitt Rom­ney, ridiculed Obama for com­par­ing him­self to Roosevelt.

Obama “said that he is like Teddy Roo­sevelt,” Rom­ney said at a cam­paign event in Par­adise Val­ley, Ariz. “And I thought, ‘In what way is he like Teddy Roo­sevelt?’ Teddy Roo­sevelt of course founded the Bull Moose Party. One of those words applies.”

Kirsten Kukowski, spokes­woman for the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee, said, “Maybe instead of try­ing to be like other pres­i­dents, Obama should try being president.”

Obama took aim at the Repub­li­cans, say­ing they would only return the same struc­tures that led to America’s eco­nomic down­turn. “Their phi­los­o­phy is sim­ple: We are bet­ter off when every­one is left to fend for them­selves and play by their own rules,” Obama said. “I’m here to say they are wrong.”

The pres­i­dent con­ceded that the coun­try is in the midst of a con­sum­ing re-examination on his watch, prompt­ing national move­ments against both gov­ern­ment spend­ing and an econ­omy that many feel dis­pro­por­tion­ately favors the elite. Obama went on the offen­sive about income equal­ity, say­ing it dis­torts democ­racy and derails the Amer­i­can dream.

Respond­ing to those who want to cut taxes and reg­u­la­tion in the belief suc­cess will trickle down, Obama said: “Here’s the prob­lem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”

Obama noted that Theodore Roo­sevelt was called a “rad­i­cal, a social­ist, even a com­mu­nist” for putting forth ideas in his last cam­paign such as an eight-hour work day, a min­i­mum wage for women, unem­ploy­ment insur­ance and a pro­gres­sive income tax.

Left unsaid: Roosevelt’s Bull Moose cam­paign in 1912 failed to return him to the White House.

Obama attempted to sum up the pain and peril for a soci­ety where the mid­dle class is strug­gling. But he also called for indi­vid­ual responsibility.

“In the end,” he said, “rebuild­ing this econ­omy based on fair play, a fair shot and a fair share will require all of us to see the stake we have in each other’s success.”

Obama also chal­lenged the big banks that took bailouts from Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers, point­ing to “a deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street.” He said banks that were bailed out had an oblig­a­tion to work to close that trust deficit and should be doing more to help rem­edy past mort­gage abuses and assist middle-class taxpayers.

Posted by AP News on Dec 6 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.