Obama to face economic woes on bus tour

US President Barack Obama sets out to shore up his fragile political standing yesterday, launching a bus tour through key Midwestern states which will resonate with voter anxiety over the economy.
Obama will spend three days trekking through Minnesota, Iowa and his adopted home state of Illinois, all of which he carried in the 2008 election, and which he can ill afford to lose when he seeks a second term next year.
The White House said Obama, weakened by a debt showdown with Republicans, a lagging economic recovery, 9.1 percent unemployment and questions about his leadership, wants to listen to voters after weeks stuck in the capital.
"The president is excited at the opportunity to get out of Washington," said his communications director Dan Pfeiffer.
"During the debt ceiling debate we were trapped here, it felt like, for many, many weeks.
"He's looking forward to traveling back home to Illinois, Minnesota and also, of course, to Iowa, which is a place that always has had a special connection with this president and his White House."
Iowa is the state where Obama rose from obscurity and won the first Democratic nominating contest against Hillary Clinton in 2008, setting him on course for the presidency.
It is also the epicenter of the accelerating race for the Republican nominating race to take him on in 2012 among candidates who are savaging his record on the economy and job creation.
Rick Perry, who shot to the top tier of the Republican pack when he jumped into the race at the weekend, will also be on the stump in Iowa yesterday.
Tea Party favorite, Representative Michele Bachmann meanwhile is also on the attack, vowing to make Obama a one-term president after winning the state's closely-watched Republican Party straw poll on Saturday.
Obama will hold two town-hall style encounters yesterday, one in rural Minnesota and one in Iowa, which will for the first time put him head-to-head with Perry, a possible general election foe who is the conservative governor of Texas.
As he set out, the White House, battered by a grim August, got an unwelcome reminder of Obama's perilous political plight, as his approval rating dipped below 40 percent in a Gallup daily tracking poll for the first time.
In recent weeks, Obama has been particularly discomforted by a decision by ratings agency Standard and Poor's to cut the top notch AAA credit rating amid fears disfunction in Congress will hamper efforts to trim the US deficit.