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President Barack Obama Visits Iowa City

Obama & Biden

Story by Jennifer Hoch
Photos by Kendall McCabe

Early Friday morning, September 7th, Iowa City anticipated President Barack Obama’s arrival to the University. Flooded streets full of students and community members awaited their beloved president as around 8,000 gathered in between Macbride and Jessup hall to hear the President speak about the upcoming election.

Most of the afternoon consisted of crammed spaces and flooded sidewalks but as soon as Vice-President Joe Biden walked onto the stage, cheers began echoing through downtown. “He has courage in his soul, he has compassion in his heart and he has steel in his spine” Vice President Joe Biden exclaimed about Barack before introducing the President.

“Hello Hawkeyes!” the President greeted the anxious crowd. “It is good to be back at the University of Iowa!”. He began his speech reflecting on the previous nights events before beginning to explain his plans on moving forward and the choice that Iowa City will make in a short 18 days upon the election.

President Barack Obama began listing the four important aspects of his political agenda only to be interrupted with chants of “Four more years” in between his words. Exporting more products with help from local Shipping Container Hire services and outsourcing fewer jobs around the world was just part of his first plan on moving forward. His second plan; controlling more of our own energy. “Ya know, this is great but you haven’t even heard the third thing yet” Obama exclaimed upon the excited chants that interrupted his list. Training new workers and creating new jobs right here in the United States of America was just part of the plan to offer the nation a better path forward. Giving Americans the chance to gain the skills they need to learn to compete was the third aspect on the agenda and the crowd once again broke into applaud after the President’s remarks of the plan cutting deficits by 4 trillion dollars.

President Obama reflected on affordability of education for the middle class, ensuring the importance of financial aid and offering accessible and affordable education. “Education was the gateway for opportunity for me…all of you students understand, this is the ticket for a middle class life.” Obama said. “Now you’ve got a choice, you can go with the other folks plan and gut education, or we can decide that here in the United States of America, no body should have their dreams set aside because of a crowded classroom or a crumbling school”. Barack reflected on the amounts of scholarships and Pell grants that have doubled since he first came into office four years ago before the eager crowd once again began rejoicing.

“You see that sign that says forward? We don’t go forward without you” Obama exclaimed. The President stressed the importance of not only registering to vote, but also ensuring that the community is registered to vote. “The election four years ago wasn’t about me, it was you” Barack said. “If you stop, change won’t happen”. “I promised we’d end the war in Iraq- we did. I said we’d wind down the war in Afghanistan- we are. And as a new tower arises above the New York skyline, Al-Qadi is on the batch of defeat and Bin Laden is dead.” He exclaimed over the crowd of attentive and enthusiastic supporters

“If you use the power, that you have we will create more good jobs in America. We will generate more homegrown energy in America, We’ll hire more teachers in America and we will send more young people to college right here in America. We’ll bring our troops home and we’ll take care of our veterans and we’ll open up more doors of opportunity to every American who’s willing to work hard. We will win Johnson County. We will win Iowa… We will finish what we started and we’ll remind the world why the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth.”

To register, go to www.Gottaregister.com and www.Gottavote.com. Stay connected to the campaign by texting OBAMA (62262).