Obama visits Ohio, defends healthcare agenda

Reporting from Washington — 

President Obama, allowing that he has run into a “buzz saw,” today carried his pitch for economic revival, healthcare and an agenda now threatened by political upheaval to battleground Ohio.

“We’ve gotten pretty far down the road,” an animated president said of his work in Washington, apparently stalled now after months of debate over healthcare legislation.

“But I’ve got to admit,” Obama said. “We hit a little bit of a buzz saw along the way. . . . This is what happens in Congress. It’s just an ugly process. . . . The longer it takes, the uglier it looks.”

Pointing to the special Senate election in Massachusetts this week, which cost his party its filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, the president told an audience at a community college in Lorain County:

“I know folks in Washington are in a little bit of a frenzy this week, trying to figure out what the election in Massachusetts the other day means,” he said. “This is what they do. . . .

“But this is not about me,” Obama said in an open-collared, colloquial appeal. “This is about you. . . .

“I didn’t take this up to boost my poll numbers. . . . You know the way to boost your poll numbers is not to do anything. . . . I didn’t take this on to score political points. There are some people who think, ‘If Obama loses, we all win.’ But you know what? I think I win when you win.”

Vowing to continue his fight for an overhaul of healthcare insurance, the president said: “I had no illusions when I took this on that this was going to be hard. . . . I had a whole bunch of political advisors telling me this may not be the smartest thing to do -- ‘You’ve got a lot on your plate. . . . Don’t do it.’ ”

But healthcare, the president said, “is part of the drag on our economy.”

Ohio may have served as Obama’s “Main Street” in this campaign-styled outing to tout his economic stimulus plans -- stopping for a hamburger lunch in a bar, meeting with workers in a factory and holding a town-hall-style session at the community college -- but these could be mean streets for his party in 2010.

In a bid to stoke the president’s sagging job approval ratings, renew the White House’s agenda for economic revival and energize his party, Obama traveled today to Ohio, a bellwether and a perennial battleground. Next week, he will target another key state, Florida.

In 2008, Obama only narrowly carried Ohio, which has voted for every winner of the White House since 1960. And now, Ohio has an open U.S. Senate seat -- with the announced retirement of Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich -- and a fight for the governor’s mansion. A popular former Republican congressman, John Kasich, is lining up for a chance to challenge Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, trailing in polls.

Unemployment has climbed to 10.9% in Ohio, it was announced today.

The day after the president’s nationally televised State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, the president and Vice President Joe Biden plan to visit the Tampa area.

Obama also narrowly carried Florida in 2008. Democrats are attempting to take the Florida governor’s office in November, with Republican Gov. Charlie Crist facing a fight within his own party for nomination for an open GOP-held Senate seat.

Unemployment has risen to 11.8% in Florida.

Offering an often-heard complaint about “the bubble” that is Washington, the president told his audience today, “Nothing beats a day where I can an escape -- I break out.”

The president has been touting his economic stimulus act as a job-saving measure responsible for creating or saving 1.5 million jobs during a downturn that has shed many millions more.

“I know these have been difficult and unsettling times for people in Elyria, in Ohio and across our country,” Obama told his audience at the community college. “I walked into office a year ago in the middle of a raging economic storm that was wreaking devastation on your town and in communities everywhere.”

Defending his bailout of the auto industry and fight for tougher banking regulation and citing the effect of the economic recovery act that he signed one month into office, the president said, “Today, because we took those actions, the worst of this economic storm has passed.” He also acknowledged, “But families like yours and communities like this one are still reeling from the devastation it left in its wake.”

Donning protective eyeglasses, the president had taken a tour of EMC Precision Machining, treading past heavy industrial machinery and speaking with workers. The company, which maintains that business is on the rebound, has fewer employees today, 44, than it had a year ago, 77.

Obama also toured the Wind Turbine Manufacturing and Fab Lab facilities at the college -- emblematic of his pitch that federal investment in “green” energy production will provide an economic engine as well.

The White House, which had planned this trip to Lorain County well before the president’s party lost its supermajority in the Senate, has billed this as another stop on Obama’s “White House to Main Street Tour.”

In Washington, House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican who has long hammered Obama with a repeating refrain of “Where are the jobs?,” said today that the president has failed to deliver on a promise of jobs that he has made before in the Buckeye State.

“When he last visited Elyria, candidate Obama promised that as president he would enact a ‘job creation agenda.” Boehner said.

“Yet for the past year, Ohioans have watched anxiously as Washington Democrats, with the approval of President Obama, have pushed a job-killing agenda that includes a ‘stimulus’ that isn’t working, a government takeover of healthcare that will raise taxes... a ‘cap and trade’ national energy tax [and other measures] that will devastate Ohio’s economy and kill jobs at a time we can least afford it.”

The president also was welcomed at his landing in Cleveland today with an op-ed piece signed by Boehner in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“Just three days have passed since voters in Massachusetts, one of the bluest of blue states, delivered the president a clear, stinging indictment of his big-government agenda by electing Republican Scott Brown to fill the U.S. Senate seat held for 47 years by the late Ted Kennedy,” Boehner wrote.

“For more than nine months, a political rebellion has been brewing as Americans have watched with angst as Washington Democrats have pushed job-killing policies that have only made a bad jobs situation even worse. Nowhere is this more evident than in the state of Ohio.”

In Ohio, the president was spotlighting one of the states that will be most heavily contested as Republicans fight for an increasing share of the Senate and House. Obama carried Ohio with just 51.2% of the vote. George W. Bush carried Ohio with a narrower margin in 2004.

Yet Obama’s standing has slipped in Ohio, as it has nationally. In April, the Ohio Poll conducted by the University of Cincinnati found that 63% of Ohioans approved of the job that Obama was performing as president. At the end of October, the latest Ohio Poll on this question measured his job approval at 52%.

Moreover, more Ohioans said they disapproved (53%) than approved (45%) of Obama’s handling of the economy.

But when the going has gotten tough for Obama in the White House, the president has gone campaigning.

In Elyria today, the president’s motorcade made an unscheduled campaign-style stop at a bar and restaurant, Smitty’s, which bears the slogan “Where Friends Meet,” for a hamburger lunch.

Inside, Obama met 98-year-old Charles Raynor. “I am just pleased to see Charlie is still eating fries at 98,” Obama said, posing for photos.

Greeting Shawn Hatcher, celebrating his 42nd birthday, the president proclaimed, “Nothing wrong with 42. I am 48. . . . I am going to buy this guy’s lunch.”

Told the man’s order was chili, Obama said, “A bowl of Chili, I can afford.”

mdsilva@latimes.com