KEY POINTS:
Fresh from a nail-biting triumph with his economic stimulus package, President Barack Obama will head to the US heartland today in an attempt to win public support for his massive rescue bill.
Adopting the no-holds-barred tactics honed during his election campaign, the President is to hold "town hall" meetings in Indiana and Florida, speaking in towns hit hard by rising unemployment.
The publicity blitz is aimed at persuading Americans that Government help will get them out of their economic mess.
It is not an easy sell. Obama's trip comes after winning the first major battle of his presidency in getting the support of just enough Republicans to ensure his US$800 billion ($1.5 trillion) stimulus is passed in the Senate.
Agreement was reached only after several days of horse-trading that caused dramatic scenes in the Capitol as Obama and his top staff urged the Senate to move the legislation forward.
Finally, on Saturday, and with Democrats threatening to fly in the desperately ill Senator Ted Kennedy to ensure they had enough votes, a compromise deal was struck with three Republican rebels. The bill now looks certain to pass on Wednesday, though tens of billions of dollars of spending has been stripped out of it.
But the razor-thin victory barely presents Obama with any breathing space in the face of an economic crisis that is worsening and a Republican Party that is increasingly strident in its opposition to the White House.
Indeed, Obama turned up the heat on Saturday by lambasting Republicans who opposed the stimulus package. In his weekly radio address, he painted them as out of touch and stuck in policies of the past that had caused the crisis.
"We can't expect relief from the tired old theories that ... doubled the national debt, threw our economy into a tailspin and led us into this mess in the first place. We can't rely on a losing formula that offers only tax cuts as the answer to all our problems while ignoring our fundamental economic challenges."
Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican national committee, said ordinary Americans needed tax cuts, not wasteful spending by a Democrat-controlled Government.
"You have to wonder if all that power has gone to their heads. American families are doing their best to balance their own budgets and pay their mortgages. The fastest way to help those families is by letting them keep more of the money they earn."
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration sought to mend fences with Moscow, offering to shelve the Pentagon's missile shield in central Europe and co-operate on arms control and other issues.
In the first major foreign policy speech from the new US Administration, the Vice-President, Joe Biden, stated categorically that Washington wanted to negotiate for the first time with Iran about its nuclear ambitions.
Biden's speech to the annual Munich security conference signalled a radical break with the neo-conservative foreign policies of the Bush White House.
"There is no conflict between our security and our ideals. We believe they are mutually reinforcing," Biden said.
"The example of our power must be matched by the power of our example. America will not torture. We will uphold the rights of those we bring to justice. We will close Guantanamo."
Obama's national security adviser, General James Jones, said that plans to put parts of the Pentagon's missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic - a project that Moscow says could trigger a new arms race - were being put on ice.
"We're interested in having a fresh look at each of our [foreign] policies. We're undergoing major policy reviews. Missile defence is one of those policies being reviewed."
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