If there was one message that appeared not to get through during the midterm elections, it was President Obama’s efforts to help the struggling economies of the industrial Midwest.
It was in places like Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan that the Democratic party took some of its heaviest losses. That happened despite repeated trips by the president touting the administration’s work to bail out the auto industry and provide stimulus funds to the economically depressed region.
But in the wake of the election, Mr. Obama appears eager to keep trying.
On Tuesday, he will head to Kokomo, Indiana, where unemployment peaked at nearly 20 percent in 2009, but has steadily fallen since then, in part thanks to the recovery of the Chrysler auto plant in the town. White House officials said Mr. Obama will tour a Chrysler plant and highlight the $8.4 billion that Indiana received in Recovery Act funds.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Monday that the trip is an opportunity to remind people that actions taken more than a year ago — to rescue the auto companies and provide money for infrastructure spending — continue to reverberate in struggling communities around the country.
“If you look at some of these places and plants that are located throughout the country, particularly in the Midwest, you’ll see,” Mr. Gibbs said. “And Kokomo is a pretty good example of a town that is very dependent upon those types of jobs for its economic livelihood.”
He added: “The President is proud of our efforts to ensure — whether there was a thousand there or more than a million people throughout the country whose jobs were saved as part of that restructuring, understanding that that restructuring was about making some difficult choices.”
Mr. Obama has said repeatedly that he believes the decision to use federal funds to bail out the auto industry was the right thing to do, even if it was seen by some of his critics as another in a string of big-government decisions by his administration.
In Kokomo, the president will have another opportunity to provide specifics for his argument.
White House officials said Indiana Transmission, the Chrysler plant in Kokomo that Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will tour, is thriving again after the bailout rescued Chrysler from bankruptcy and the plant received $343 million in direct investments. The officials noted that 400 employees at the plant who had been laid off by Chrysler have been recalled by the company.
The case has been made easier recently, with the news that both Chrysler and General Motors are profitable. And the recent public stock offering by GM means that the government is likely to recoup its investment in that company sooner than had been expected.
There is some evidence to suggest that Mr. Obama’s latest efforts to tout the good news has begun to break through with the broader public. But his political adversaries are also continuing their own rhetorical campaigns against the government spending.
Republicans have hammered home their attacks on Mr. Obama and the White House. They argue that the economy continues to struggle in spite of the billions that have been spent, especially when it comes to the stimulus legislation that Mr. Obama pushed through Congress.
“Here was a bill that was supposed to create millions of jobs and keep unemployment from rising above eight percent,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said in his radio address last week.
“Yet, since Democrats passed it nearly two years ago, more than three million people have lost jobs and the economy barely has a pulse. The American people delivered a clear verdict on this and other failed experiments in the government-as-economic-stimulator on Election Day,” Mr. McConnell said.
At the event in Kokomo, Mr. Obama will seek to rebut that charge in part by highlighting the change that has come to the small town since those billions have been spent. That includes small things like new lighting in the downtown, paid for by stimulus funds. And it includes big things, like a $300 million investment in a solar plant just outside the city.
But with Republicans in charge of the House and more numerous in the Senate, Mr. Obama’s message will continue to do battle with those of his adversaries.
And so despite the Beach Boys song, going to the real Kokomo to talk about the economy will be no beach vacation for Mr. Obama.
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Doug Mills/The New York Times Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, talked about President Obama’s smoking habit during the daily press briefing on Thursday.
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