Obama to hit the campaign trail...again

[EraOfResponsibility]

President Obama retreated to the serenity of Camp David for the first time yesterday, stepping back briefly from a presidency that has quickly found itself tested by a loyal opposition and the loss of the pitch-perfect tone that helped sweep him to office.

Beset by criticism of an alleged ethical double standard over some of his Cabinet choices and an intensifying partisan debate over his economic recovery plan, Obama is attempting a return to the campaign-style approach and aggressiveness that echoes the toughest days of his battle with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In a fiery speech before a gathering of House Democrats in Williamsburg on Thursday night that took place even as he was searching out GOP support for his stimulus package, Obama blasted Republican policies that "for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin." He then led Democratic members of Congress in a familiar chant: "Fired up!" he declared. "Ready to go!" they returned -- a call and response that became a trademark of his campaign.

In his weekly radio and Internet address yesterday, Obama praised a late-night stimulus deal hatched with a handful of Republicans in the Senate. But in a continuation of warnings about the consequences of delay, he said legislative squabbling should not "make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary" or risk turning an economic crisis into a "a national catastrophe."

Tomorrow and Tuesday, Obama will leave the confines of the White House for town hall meetings in Elkhart, Ind., and Fort Myers, Fla., where he will pitch his economic solutions in a pair of states he worked furiously as a candidate.

"Sounds like the good old days, doesn't it?" press secretary Robert Gibbs said to reporters at his Friday briefing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/07/AR2009020701892.html