A big part of Obama’s play in Iowa this week was to embrace as an old friend the state that launched his presidential ambitions.
“It’s so good to be back . . . because this is really where our movement began — here in Iowa,” Obama told supporters in Marshalltown.
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Obama’s fond memories contrast sharply with Iowans’ standoffishness toward Romney — both four years ago, when he lost the Republican caucuses despite spending heavily here, and this January, when he barely won despite a weak field and a series of harsh TV attacks against his top opponents.
More than once during his speeches this week, Obama encouraged Romney to visit Iowa — as if the Republican is a stranger who has never been here or doesn’t understand the struggles of its people.
Empathetic leader vs. patrician
“Maybe he needs to come to Iowa to learn something about wind power,” Obama said during one typical speech, in a packed middle-school gymnasium in Marshalltown, in which he criticized Romney for opposing a tax-cut extension for wind energy. “He’d know if he came here that 7,000 jobs have been created here in Iowa by the wind industry — more than any other state in America. If he came to Iowa, he might know that not only are we putting out these windmills, but, increasingly, they’re made right here in Iowa, made here in America.”
It’s an image — he as the empathetic leader, Romney as the distant patrician — that Obama would like voters to embrace across the country.
Even first lady Michelle Obama, who joined her husband Wednesday for the final day of the Iowa tour, lent a hand in drawing the contrast — albeit in gentler packaging that focused on the president’s biography and left unsaid how it contrasted with the privileged upbringing of his opponent.
“We all know who my husband is, don’t we?” she asked a roaring crowd in a quaint shopping district of Davenport late Wednesday afternoon. “And we all know what he stands for. And I remind people, your president is the son of a single mother who struggled to put herself through school and pay the bills. He’s the grandson of a woman who woke up before dawn every day to catch a bus to her job at a bank. So I remind people that Barack knows what it means when a family struggles. And he knows what it means to want something better for your kids and your grandkids. And that’s why I love him, and that’s why I will have his back forever.”
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