Ohio: Bill Clinton

WASHINGTON -- House Republican leader John Boehner has perfected the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

That's why the dapper congressman from southwest Ohio is the official GOP voice of opposition to newly elected President Barack Obama, charged with sowing the seeds for a Republican revival if the public sours on Obama.

The upbeat Boehner (prounounced BAY-ner) is not afraid to personally praise the president while dismissing his agenda as socialist. He applauds Obama's professed willingness to cut wasteful government programs and work with Republicans, while claiming his programs will return to "the era of big government."

"When the president reaches across the aisle, he'll have no stronger supporters than Republicans," Boehner recently told reporters.

The New York Times noted that the speech had the feel of a State of the Union Address. President Obama casted aside "pretense and pride" and spoke to the nation with a "generational confidence".

But Mr. Obama skated past his disagreements with Republicans to claim a broader mandate to seize "opportunity from ordeal." Though he pushed through a huge economic recovery package in his first month in office, he failed to forge the partisan consensus he had sought. So his speech before a nationally televised audience on Tuesday was a chance to shift from legislative leader to national leader.

"As we stand at this crossroads of history," he said from the rostrum in the House chamber, "the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us, watching to see what we do with this moment, waiting for us to lead.

"This is the first real test of welfare reform. All of these advocates who thumped their chests and said we ended welfare as we knew it, what did we think would happen when our economy tanked?" asked Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks.

"Now, we have people with college degrees who can't find minimum-wage jobs."

It's the first time caseloads have grown in the dozen years since the nation overhauled the welfare system, instituting time limits and work requirements to push poor Americans off government assistance and into jobs and self-sufficiency.

Although welfare rolls still are only a quarter of their peak in 1992, the number of Ohioans receiving a monthly assistance check is up 14 percent in the past 1 1/2 years, reversing a decade-long decline.

DELAWARE -- Hillary Clinton lost Delaware County but won Ohio in the Democratic primary. She returned Friday to deliver both for Barack Obama in the general election.

Clinton told hundreds at Buckeye Valley High School deep inside this emerging swing county that no state has more to gain or lose in the election than Ohio. For eight years the state has sunk under the weight of President Bush's economic policies and will sink further if John McCain is elected, Clinton said.