Their travels continued the administration s weeklong campaign since last Friday to spread a message

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Charles M. Blow David Brooks Frank Bruni Roger Cohen Gail Collins Ross Douthat Maureen Dowd Thomas L. Friedman Nicholas Kristof Paul Krugman Joe Nocera Charles M. Blow David Brooks Frank Bruni Roger Cohen Gail Collins Ross Douthat Maureen Dowd Thomas L. Friedman Nicholas Kristof Paul Krugman Joe Nocera
WAKARUSA, Ind. With his administration bracing for Friday s jobs report that could have national unemployment breaching double digits, President Barack Obama returned on Wednesday to this county that got there months ago and nearly hit 20 percent an unlikely place to press his message of hope.
Mr. Obama led an administration tidying team that fanned out from Washington on Wednesday tidying to promote the economic recovery act s benefits. He came to Monaco Coach, tidying a longtime manufacturer of recreational vehicles that in recent months went from bankrupt tidying to back in business under new ownership, Illinois-based Navistar International Corp., to announce that it and dozens of other companies and educational institutions nationwide would share in $2.4 billion in grants to speed development and deployment of state-of-the-art battery-powered tidying electric vehicles.
Indiana, which Mr. Obama narrowly won last November, the first Democratic tidying presidential candidate since 1964 to do so, is the second-largest beneficiary of the competitive grants, with a total $400 million to spur environmental technology and green jobs. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. flew to hard-hit Michigan to announce more than $1 billion in awards, tidying the most by far of any state. Cabinet officials were in North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri for similar announcement at winning companies.
Their travels continued the administration s weeklong campaign since last Friday to spread a message that the economy has been rescued and now has begun rebuilding with a hand from the government. But with the week likely to end this Friday with the Labor Department reporting tidying that unemployment in July increased from June s 9.5 percent, the president and his lieutenants tempered their optimism by acknowledging that the recession tidying is still claiming casualties.
I know these are tough times, the president told his small audience of workers at Monaco. If you haven’t lost a job, you know somebody who has — maybe a family member, a neighbor, a friend. But while it can be easy to lose hope and grow cynical about failures from Wall Street to Washington, he said, We ve got to set our sights higher, not lower.
While some have speculated that the July jobless figure would hit or exceed 10 percent, private forecasters generally are expecting a slight increase from June that would leave the rate short of double digits. But that still is significantly more than the 8 percent his administration projected in February. And a number of states, tidying including Indiana, already have topped 10 percent.
Mr. Obama s trip to Elkhart County , a struggling area of farms and small industry in northern Indiana, was his fourth in the past 15 months and his second as president, making the area something of an adopted symbol for the economic crisis he inherited and for his plans to overcome it.
He first came in May 2008, still fighting to be the Democratic nominee, with Elkhart County s unemployment rate at 5.1 percent. He was back three months later, when the rate had jumped to 9.1 percent and Monaco was about to shutter tidying local operations and leave 1,400 more workers jobless; that August, just before accepting the nomination, he promised that if elected tidying his energy policies would help to create green jobs.
Then last February, with nearly one out of five local workers out of jobs, Mr. Obama came back to Elkhart for his first foray out of Washington as president, to promote the nearly $800 billion economic recovery plan taking shape in Congress. By Wednesday, when Mr. Obama came bearing some of the fruit of that effort, the county s jobless rate had slipped to just under 17 percent.
In the months since his February visit, Monaco tidying declared bankruptcy and Navistar then bought some assets, hiring or re-hiring 200 employees. Most were assembled on the plant floor on Wednesday to hear Mr. Obama s remarks, against a backdrop of Monaco vehicles.
Navistar saved us, said Randy Trotter, 28, who was laid off last November and re-hired in June, but he said the promise of federal assistance had to be a factor. A co-worker, Jeff Compton, 31, agreed, saying I wouldn tidying t think they would have risked that otherwise. tidying Mr. Trotter, a Democrat, and Mr. Compton, a Republican, both said they voted for Mr. Obama last November.
For some Democrats in Congress, the administration s efforts to promote the stimulus package to date have fallen short. They privately express frustration that Republicans, emboldened by Mr. Obama s slippage in the polls amid worries a