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Obama’s ‘listening tour’ takes aim at unpopular Congress

“Frustration and bitterness” doesn’t exactly have the same ring as “hope and change,” but nonetheless it’s the message U.S. President Barack Obama is hammering home on a swing through the Midwest that’s being derided as a taxpayer-funded campaign tour.
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WASHINGTON — “Frustration and bitterness” doesn’t exactly have the same ring as “hope and change,” but nonetheless it’s the message U.S. President Barack Obama is hammering home on a swing through the Midwest that’s being derided as a taxpayer-funded campaign tour.

Obama’s summer of misery continues with a new poll suggesting his public approval rating is at the lowest level of his presidency as those on both the left and right accuse him of a lack of leadership on the country’s dismal economy.

The White House describes his three-day Midwest jaunt as a “listening tour” to discuss job growth and the impact of federal economic policies on Americans hard-hit by the recession.

But Obama is apparently taking a page out of the playbooks of Harry S. Truman and Bill Clinton, Democratic presidents who both ran against unpopular Congresses they successfully accused of obstinately blocking legislation that would help everyday Americans.

Obama’s not just listening on his Midwest tour, he’s taking aim at the congressional Republicans he says are putting the boots to White House and Democratic efforts to rejuvenate the economy.

“The only thing that is holding us back is our politics,” he told a forum of farmers, small business owners and community groups on Tuesday in Iowa as he listed various thwarted proposals to kick start the economy while announcing a rural job creation program.

“The only that’s preventing us from passing the bills I just mentioned is the refusal of a faction in Congress to put country ahead of party. And that has to stop. Our economy cannot afford it.”

Robert Gibbs, the one-time White House press secretary who’s now one of Obama’s top campaign advisers, echoed his boss on Tuesday, suggesting Republicans have ulterior motives in fighting the president at every turn.

“Are they not dealing with these things because, quite frankly, they just don’t want to see the economy get better because they want to see an election that might turn out better for them?” he asked on NBC’s “Today.”

It’s that kind of talk that has raised the hackles of Republicans.

Obama’s three-day trip is in fact a taxpayer-funded leg of his re-election campaign, and a “fraud of a bus tour to spin his failure to put Americans back to work,” Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, said in a conference call to supporters.