(CBS News) POLAND, Ohio - Candidate Barack Obama tells a compelling story about the American middle-class dream. In shirtsleeves in the town square in Sandusky, Ohio, and at twilight in Parma, he explains how the theory at the heart of most of American life - that hard work and responsibility will lead to prosperity - is under threat. His audiences during his two-day bus tour are attentive. When they hear him speak, some say, "Amen." Others repeat his last word out loud, as if to affirm its truth. A man in Poland raised his hand as if in prayer, but most keep both hands raised to film him on their cell phones.
The call-and-response might make it feel like a church service, but the candidate is not speaking to his audience; he is speaking from it. He is one of them, he says, which is why he understands this threat to their way of life. "I believe in that basic promise of America because I lived it. That's my biography," he said amid the hay bales and a large American flag in Maumee, Ohio, on Thursday. At the end of the day, he said, "I saw myself in you. I saw my hopes and dreams in you. And when I see your kids, I see my kids. And when I see your grandparents, I see my grandparents."
This guy may really have a shot against the incumbent.
Barack Obama's pitch that he should be re-elected as the protector of the middle class is so skillful one might forget that a plurality of voters say their lives have gotten worse since he took office. The tension between Barack Obama the campaigner and Barack Obama the sitting president was on full display during his bus tour through Ohio on Thursday and Friday.
