By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

President Bush's campaign stops in Lebanon and Cincinnati today with a bus tour are intended to highlight how his administration's economic policies have helped to create jobs.

But compared to previous stops on Bush's "Yes, America Can" tour - rust belt towns in Michigan and northern Ohio where the manufacturing sector has been particularly hard hit - foreign policy is likely to take on greater importance in southern Ohio.

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Bush comes to Cincinnati at a time when Iraqi guerrillas are holding captive Pfc. Keith "Matt" Maupin, of Union Township, Clermont County. The dramatic escape of a civilian contractor Sunday makes Maupin the only confirmed hostage remaining.

Ohio's diversity in population, employment and politics make it one of the most critical states in the election. Bush won the state by 4 percentage points over Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

Bush is returning to a city where he declared, in an October 2002 speech at Union Terminal, that Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." Those statements, which justified the coming war in Iraq, later proved to be based on faulty intelligence.

And the Democratic National Committee is shadowing the Bush campaign with a "Mission Not Accomplished" tour, highlighting the first anniversary of Bush's May 1, 2003 landing on an aircraft carrier to declare the end of major hostilities in Iraq.

By Bush's own admission, recent weeks in Iraq have been trying. But Ohioans are more willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt there than at home, said Eric Rademacher, director of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll.

"Throughout his presidency, Ohioans have tied the president's positives to foreign and defense policy much more than economic policy," he said. "The economy right now is a more dangerous situation for the president than the situation in Iraq."

In northwest Ohio, where Bush begins this morning with a pancake breakfast outside Toledo, 49 percent of registered voters say the economy is their top concern, according to an Ohio Poll in February. Foreign policy ranked third, behind health care, at 9 percent.

In southwestern Ohio, the economy ranked almost as high - 46 percent - but foreign policy ranked second at 17 percent. Similar polls around the country show that foreign policy is more important to voters than at any time since the Vietnam War.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen, the southwestern Ohio coordinator for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said the high number of reservists in the area brings the war on terror home to Cincinnatians.

Allen underscored that point at a "Party for the President" in Green Township last week. Given the opportunity to ask Vice President Cheney one question via speakerphone, Allen wanted to know how firm the administration was on the June 30 date for handing over sovereignty to a provisional Iraqi government.

Cheney said they were sticking to the schedule.

"In a normal presidential election, foreign policy concerns take a back seat to domestic concerns. This is a different situation when you have troops at war," Allen said.

The Bush-Cheney campaign said the campaign swing was designed to highlight how the president has met the nation's challenges - foreign and domestic - with "strength, optimism and resolve."

Rep. Rob Portman, R-Terrace Park, said the yellow ribbons all over Clermont County on Monday testified to a "rallying effect" in the heartland.

"We've had casualties in Iraq, and even had local soldiers captured, and yet support for the president and his policies in Iraq has grown," said Portman, one of Bush's leading lieutenants in Congress.

"He said in every one of his speeches - including the one in Cincinnati - that this is going to be a long, hard fight," he said. "People are pretty sophisticated about this stuff. They know it's going to be difficult. They know it's going to take sacrifice. But they're resolute in the need to do what we're doing in Iraq."

The president's schedule includes an afternoon stop in front of the Golden Lamb Inn in Lebanon and an early evening rally at the Cincinnati Gardens. Both events require tickets.

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E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com