WASHINGTON – Mired in one of the bleakest patches of his presidency, Barack Obama hits the US heartland Monday, seeking to rekindle the spirit of hope which swept him to the White House but has been crushed by a lame economy.
Obama will embark on a fabled ritual of American politics – a bus tour to rural areas of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois, which have all felt the lash of the economic crisis and will be important to his 2012 re-election bid.
Hope is a commodity in short supply, as fears mount that the tepid recovery from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s will fizzle into a second recession and with unemployment stubbornly pegged at 9.1 percent.
A staggering 74 percent of Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction, according to a RealClearPolitics polls average, and a CNN survey this month found 60 percent think the economy is still in a downturn.
Obama, reeling from a showdown with Republicans over debt, has seen his approval rating dip below 45 percent, and slowed growth in the economy and jobs market are casting a cloud over his 2012 hopes.
Just a few months ago, after the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, many commentators were predicting Obama would stroll to the second term that every presidency needs to be termed a historic success.
But when Republican Tea Party lawmakers drove the United States to the brink of a historic default in a row over raising the government’s borrowing authority, Obama’s prestige took a severe hit.
As they say in Chinese,
Rots of Ruck.
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