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Cleveland
Plain Dealer...
Go
where Ohio’s hurting, Mr. President
By Thomas Suddes
According
to the old saying, “If
wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” An update for President Barack
Obama:
If speeches created jobs, any Ohioan who needs work could find it.
The
president is to speak in Columbus
on Tuesday, presumably to ballyhoo his new, improved, jobs-jobs-jobs
plan.
No
question, the president is a great
orator. No question, either, he is a weak manager. And when Ohioans
elect someone
to high office, what they are really doing -- did James A. Rhodes say
this,
too? -- is hiring management.
That
was the story, A-to-Z, of George
V. Voinovich. Voinovich is as tangy as Maalox, but he got the job done.
Ohioans
don’t want soaring speeches. They want soaring bank accounts.
As
to the site of the president’s
Tuesday speech, it may be a genuine coincidence that the July
unemployment rate
in Franklin County (which includes Columbus) was a not-seasonally
adjusted 8.2
percent.
On
an apples-to-apples basis, Ohio’s
statewide rate was 9.2 percent. In fact, of Ohio’s 88 counties,
Franklin’s
unemployment rate ranked 76th. (Ranking No. 1 was Pike County, south of
Columbus, at 15.6 percent).
By
speaking in Columbus, Ohio’s most
populous city, the president will get acres and hours of coverage. In
2008,
Obama carried Franklin County by almost 120,000 votes over Republican
John
McCain. Moreover, Franklin County preferred Democratic Gov. Ted
Strickland last
year to one-time local Congressman John Kasich. (Government towns
aren’t high
on politicians who vow to shrink government.) Statewide, Ohioans
preferred
Kasich.
So
in Columbus, Obama may find an easy
audience. But if the president actually believes a pep rally is a cure
for
joblessness, why doesn’t he go where Ohioans are really hurting, such
as Pike
County?
Pike
is sometimes considered a
“yellow-dog-Democrat” county -- a place where voters would elect even a
yellow
dog to office if it ran as a Democrat (although McCain carried Pike by
129 votes
in ‘08). Last week, a big pro-Obama-Biden sign was within sight of a
Pike
County stretch of Ohio 32, the James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway.
When, Mr.
President, will you rally in Piketon?
Then
there’s Clinton County, southeast
of Dayton. Agreed, at least since the 1860s, Clinton (seat: Wilmington)
has
only once backed a Democrat for president -- in 1964 (Lyndon B.
Johnson).
Clinton County gave 64 percent of its 2008 presidential vote to Obama’s
Republican foe, McCain. And in 1958, Clinton voted as an anti-union,
right-to-work county.
A
few years back, DHL, the German air
freight company, left its one-time hub at the former Clinton County Air
Force
Base. That pulled the rug out from under the county economy. Clinton’s
July
countywide unemployment rate -- 13.4 percent -- was Ohio’s third-worst.
Still,
the former DHL hub, now called
Wilmington Air Park, “can accommodate full instrument approach for the
largest
aircraft made today.” Sounds as if you could berth Air Force One there,
Mr.
President -- if you wanted to go where times are truly tough in Ohio.
July’s
hardest-hit county in Northeast
Ohio was Huron, with the state’s seventh-worst unemployment rate (12.7
percent). Things were almost as tight in nearby Crawford County, where
unemployment was at 12.5 percent.
A
couple days in small-town Ohio can
open a visitor’s eyes. You missed the Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival, Mr.
President. But consider speaking in Bucyrus anyway: A town that likes
bratwurst
that much might also love your baloney -- unless, that is, your brand
keeps
getting undercut by congressional Republicans’ competing brand.
Read
it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
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