President Barack Obama addresses area crowd near Decorah during three-day Midwest bus tour

by Kelli Boylen
Freelance writer

President Barack Obama’s visit to Northeast Iowa is an event which won’t be soon forgotten by the fortunate 500 people who were able to attend. Since the town hall-style meeting at Seed Savers Exchange north of Decorah was an official White House event and not a campaign event, ticket distribution was handled locally through Luther College and Seed Savers Exchange.
Most who managed to get the coveted tickets were thrilled. Karen Pratte of Waterville was one of those who not only got a ticket, but she was able to meet the President prior to the event. Pratte is chair of the Allamakee County Democrats, so she was thrilled to have the opportunity.
Pratte says, “What impressed me most was President Obama’s sincere warmth, how attentive he was when meeting each one of us, how he listened closely, then graciously thanked us for coming. Our small group was escorted to the lawn area where President Obama then greeted the crowd who had gathered to see him.”
“This place is as pretty as I remembered it,” Obama said in his opening comments at Seed Savers Exchange, recalling an earlier campaign visit to the area. “It is spectacular.”
He spoke for about 15 minutes to the crowd seated on a grassy hillside about some of the challenges facing this country. Partisan politics were brought up several times.
“See, the problem we have is not with our country; the problem is that our politics is broken. The problem is, is that we’ve got the kind of partisan brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country, that’s more interested in seeing their political opponents lose than seeing the country win.”
Obama said that he was speaking to Iowa native Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on the bus while traveling about the importance of opening up world trade agreements so the “extraordinary bounty of the heartland of America” makes its way to markets.
Senator Mary Jo Wilhelm (D-Cresco) said about the event, “The part of President Obama’s message that makes the most sense to me is this: Our nation’s economic recovery will start in the rural areas and small towns of Iowa. We must focus our recovery efforts on Main Street, not Wall Street… The President was right when he said the nation’s economic recovery will start: in the classrooms of Northeast Iowa Community College and other community colleges across our state; on Iowa farms across the Midwest; in the workshops of basement inventors across Iowa; and in the storefronts of small business owners in northeast Iowa.”
Wilhelm added, “For our nation to recover from the worst recession since World War II, Republicans and Democrats must work together to create opportunities, strengthen the middle class, and restore that sense of economic security in small towns and rural areas across Iowa."
The President took eight questions from the audience, ranging on a wide variety of topics, from large companies opting out of universal health care to voting rights for felons who have served their time.
Obama encouraged other politicians to meet with their voters. “What they need to do is come to Decorah or go to Cannon Falls or meet with their constituents back home and hear the frustration and understand that people are sick and tired of the nonsense and the political games. And hopefully, when they come back in September, they’re going to have a wake-up call that says we need to move the country forward. You’ve got to start focusing on doing the people’s business. That’s what everybody is expecting,” Obama said.
Other remarks made by the President during the town hall-style gathering drew a lot of audience response. A retired high school social studies teacher asked the president what he can do to help support collective bargaining rights.
“A lot of us entered into the middle class because our parent or a grandparent was in a union. Remember that? When I hear this kind of anti-union rhetoric and anti-union assaults, I’m thinking these folks have amnesia. They don’t remember that that helped build our middle class and strengthen our economy,” the President said.
He also addressed the need for the government to live within its means. “Now, we do have to be thinking about how we invest in education and how we invest in infrastructure and how we invest in basic research, but still do it while the government is living within its means. And neither party is blameless on this. The truth is we had a balanced budget in 2000 - the last time we had a Democratic President - and what we ended up doing was we had two wars that we didn’t pay for, a prescription drug plan we didn’t pay for. We had two tax cuts that we did not pay for, and the result was a burgeoning debt.
“And then what ended up happening was because of the recession and the lack of regulation on Wall Street, this wrenching recession meant less tax revenues coming in and more going out, because we were providing help to states to make sure teachers and police officers and firefighters weren’t laid off, and to make sure that we could help small businesses and put people back to work.”
He also commented, “So states all across the country are laying off teachers - this is not the time for us to be laying off teachers. We should be training teachers, putting the best teachers in front of the classroom, because whoever’s best educated is going to win the race for the future."
One comment which spurred some laughter was, “We kind of romanticize sometimes what democracy used to be like. But when you listen to what the Federalists said about the anti-Federalists and the names that Jefferson called Hamilton and back and forth - I mean, those guys were tough. Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me.”
The question that created the largest audience response for the evening was the last one, presented by 18-year-old Ben Bernatz of Decorah. He said, “You’re talking a lot about how to bring people together and how to get our democracy to work together. It’s all about finding common ground… we’ve seen the rise of the Tea Party, and they really like to cite Thomas Jefferson for his opposition to big government and support of small government. What they don’t ever mention is his fear of monied interests in politics.”
He then went on to ask how Obama thought the next presidential election will be affected by the fact that it will be the first in which unlimited corporate contributions in politics are allowed.
“I do share your concern that money has become such a powerful factor in politics that it has a distorting effect, and it doesn’t just have a distorting effect during election time,” Obama said. He said that the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the unlimited corporate contributions can not be changed, but “…if voters all across the country say we want a different kind of politics, we will get a different kind of politics.
“If all of you are enlisted in the fight to make sure that we’ve got a country that is looking out for middle-class families and promoting common sense, and thinking about the next generation and not just the next election, and is thinking more about country than it is about party, and is less interested in vilifying opponents than figuring out how to get something done, then we’re going to start electing folks who do that.
“And let me tell you, when we have that kind of politics, watch out. Watch out. You will not be able to stop this country. You will not be able to stop America from making sure that the 21st century is the American century, just like the 20th century was,” Obama concluded.
Pratte said, “President Obama’s words and his call to action renewed my hope that there can be change where people will be put first, but it is up to each one of us.” An internet search on the words “white house press office seed savers remarks” will find the entire transcripts from the evening.