Traveling with Bayh Across the Crossroads of America

Anne E. Kornblut
ANDERSON, Ind. -- Sen. Evan Bayh has a reputation for hokey all-American goodness, and campaigning with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in his home state on Thursday, he lived up to it.

As the pair faced questions about whether Clinton might pick Bayh as her vice president, the Indiana senator joked that it is the "only vice" he's every been associated with. In a high school gymnasium here, about an hour outside Indianapolis, the crowd loved it.

Clinton drew large, enthusiastic crowds in Terre Haute and in Anderson, a working-class town that has suffered severe job losses in the manufacturing sector in recent years. She drew on her husband's popularity among state Democrats. Traveling alongside Bayh, she promised to revisit trade agreements and help renew job growth. In a high school arena here, she said: "I know during this campaign there have been some folks who've said, 'We don't want to go back to the 1990s. And I always think, which part of the '90s they didn't like, the peace or the prosperity?"

Comparing the economic landscape to the one she has become familiar with in upstate New York, Clinton said the key to improving the economy nationwide is to "reverse this tide, this ocean of red ink" caused by excessive federal spending.