Obama in Cannon Falls: It’s time to ‘choose the next generation over the next election’

Against a backdrop of a giant American flag and looking casual with rolled shirtsleeves, President Barack Obama greeted crowds near a stream at Cannon Falls’ Hannah’s Bend Park Monday.

Billed as a “rural road trip” and economic listening session by the White House, the event is one stop on a route that took him through Zumbrota, Minn., and Decorah, Iowa, yesterday.

Around 500 people — diverse in age and race — were there to hear the president’s thoughts on the economy and plans for the recovery.

Also there for Obama’s speech — which mixed equal parts pointed campaign-style rhetoric and commander-in-chief–style bipartisanship — were local, state and federal officials.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who on Friday touted “an agriculture community that is as strong as it’s been in history,” was there to back Obama. In a press release, he said, “Creating jobs and economic opportunity in rural America is a priority for the Obama administration, and the White House Rural Council has used an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to leverage resources across the federal government to achieve that goal.”

Also on hand were Gov. Mark Dayton and Sen. Al Franken (below), Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Reps. Keith Ellison and Tim Walz (above), and Cannon Falls Mayor Robby Robinson, among others.

Another audience standout was Rochester resident Igor Vovkovinskiy, sporting the same “World’s Biggest Obama Supporter” t-shirt he wore at the president’s health care reform rally in Minneapolis in September 2009. Vovkovinskiy stands seven-feet, eight-inches tall.

Obama addressed the problems the U.S. faces economically, acknowledging that job growth isn’t fast enough and noting the insecurity Americans feel.  “Obviously, with the markets going up and down last week and this downgrade, a lot of folks were feeling a little anxious and distressed and feeling like, boy, we’ve been working so hard over the last two and a half years to get this economy back out of recession, and some folks worry that we might be slipping back,” he said. “I want all of you to understand: There is nothing that we’re facing that we can’t solve with some spirit of America first; a willingness to say, we’re going to choose party — we’re going to choose country over party, we’re going to choose the next generation over the next election.”

Obama didn’t refrain from laying into congressional Republicans. “We’ve got a willingness to play partisan games and engage in brinksmanship that not only costs us in terms of the economy now, but also is going to place a burden on future generations,” he said, later adding: “We just went through this debacle with the debt ceiling — an entirely self-inflicted wound. It wasn’t something that was necessary. We had put forward a plan that would have stabilized our debt and our deficits for years to come. But because we’ve got a politics in which some folks in Congress — not the folks who are here — but some in Congress would rather see their opponents lose than America win, we ended up creating more uncertainty and more damage to an economy that was already weak.”

Obama, greeting a sailor, included military personnel in his appeal for swifter congressional action on the employment front. “I meet young people, 23, 24 years old, they’re in charge of platoons, making life or death decisions,” Obama said. “They’re in charge of millions, tens of millions, a hundred million dollars’ worth of equipment, and they’re coming home and they can’t find work. So we’ve said, let’s give tax credits to companies that are hiring our veterans, and let’s put them back to work and let’s let them use their skills to get this country moving again.”

Before taking audience questions, the president finished up the speech with a call to action. “You’ve got to send a message to Washington that it’s time for the games to stop. It’s time to put country first. It is time for the games to stop.”

The three-day tour continues in Peosta, Iowa, today and concludes in Obama’s home state with a town hall meeting in Atkinson, Illinois, on Wednesday. Watch the live-stream of the tour.

All photos by Kathy Easthagen for the Minnesota Independent. View more at our Flickr page. Visit the White House web site to read the transcript of Obama’s speech and the Q&A that followed.