Obama returns, Obama returned to Iowa to rekindle the passion, Iowa to rekindle the passion

This prairie state is the place where his unlikely bid for presidency began. But now it is 2012, and the big question for President Obama is whether, four

years after that historic run, Iowa can do for him what it did in 2008.
 Midway through a three-day bus tour in which he is traveling from the Nebraska border through windmill farms and dried-out cornfields east toward Illinois,

Mr. Obama is trying hard to reignite that fire, using the considerable arsenal at his disposal.

He is using the executive reach of the presidency — he began his trip on Monday announcing $170 million for aid to farmers and ranchers afflicted by the

drought. He is using the natural props that this state has always provided for the legions of politicians who flock here — posing for a photo with the Iowa

State Fair pageant queen and loudly demanding, in front of reporters at the fairgrounds, his helping of “pork chop on a stick.”

(He got two on Monday evening, but alas, they were on a paper plate instead of a stick, and no one remembered to supply the president with utensils, leaving

him to wail plaintively at the crowd: “Someone’s got to have a knife and fork!”)

And he is using his own well-known gift as an orator to try to get the flame going again.

“The centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s entire economic plan is to give another $5 trillion tax cut,” mostly to the rich, Mr. Obama told a campaign audience of

around 800 here. “Understand this is not asking you to pay more taxes to reduce our deficit, or to help kids get an education, or rebuild some roads — it’

s asking you to pay more to give an extra tax break to people making $250,000 or more a year.”

The president is mixing in campaign rallies with tête-à-têtes with local business owners. At Coffee Connection in Knoxville, Mr. Obama even talked with a

Republican, the cafe’s owner, Mark Raymie. (A campaign aide told amused reporters afterward that “we don’t party-ID people when we go to local

establishments.”)

He chatted with patrons of the coffee shop about White House beer — apparently brewed on the grounds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — and when one man evinced

an interest, the president sent out to his bus, Ground Force One, to get him a bottle. Then he wrote an excuse slip for a woman who was going to be late for

work because of her presidential shoulder-rubbing.

It remains anyone’s guess whether Mr. Obama can replicate the magic of 2008, and to become a two-term president, he dearly needs Iowa. A swing state, it has

one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, though its booming farm economy has been hurt by the drought.

Mr. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, sent his new running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, here on Monday on Mr. Ryan’s first

solo foray on the campaign trail, a sign of how much the Republicans want to win this state’s six electoral votes.

It will be hard for Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan to outdo the Obama ground operation here — it remained largely in place after 2008 and was one of the first

places the Obama campaign revved up again for the 2012 cycle. But the Romney camp, sensing the potential to plug into a larger disenchantment with the

overall national employment picture, has blanketed the state in advertising and appearances by surrogates and the candidate himself.

At an appearance at the Nelson Pioneer Farm and Museum here on Tuesday, the president conceded that he was being outspent, saying, “They’ve got people

writing $10 million checks.”

Mr. Obama continued: “All the ads are the same. They say ‘the economy’s not doing well and it’s Obama’s fault.’ ” He called that a strategy to win an

election, not a plan to turn around the economy.

At the centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s bus tour is his broader electoral strategy: to hold the states won by Democrats in the last three elections, and then to

find the additional 28 electoral votes he needs from a combination of other swing states, like Iowa (6 votes), Ohio (18 votes), Virginia (13 votes) or New

Hampshire, Colorado and New Mexico.

Polls in Iowa are very close to the national average, showing a tight race, with more showing Mr. Obama holding a slight lead rather than Mr. Romney.

Mr. Obama on Tuesday called on Congress to extend expiring tax credits for wind energy production. A White House spokesman said a new Energy Department

report indicated that wind power installations surged in 2011, but warned that fear that the tax credit would expire could lead to a slowdown with

accompanying job loss.

The report seemed timed to coincide with the president’s trip to Iowa, where his motorcade whizzed past countless windmills as it traversed Interstate 80

and rural roads. The report said that 75,000 jobs in the country now depend on wind power.

Mr. Romney has opposed extending the credits, a position that Jennifer Psaki, the Obama campaign press spokeswoman, labeled surprising enough to leave even

some Republicans in “utter disbelief.”

Romney campaign aides say that he would boost the wind industry through deregulation by rewarding technological innovation.