President Barack Obama set off on a college tour on Tuesday intended to recapture young voters' enthusiasm heading into the height of his re-election campaign.

The president told an audience of Iowa coeds that they should be more invested in his campaign than any other age group, during a stop at Iowa State University in Ames.

"The truth is you've got more at stake in this election than just about anybody. When you step in that voting booth, the choice you make in that one instance is gonna shape your country and your world for decades to come," Obama told about 6,000 students. "I know that's a pretty heavy idea to lay on you on a Tuesday but it's true."

Obama warned that his Republican opponent Mitt Romney, if elected, would enact policies that would be detrimental to college-aged students and recent graduates, seizing on Romney’s opposition to the national health care law, which has allowed students up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans.

"Gov. Romney promised that sometime between taking the oath of office and going to the inaugural ball he'd sit right down, grab a pen and kick 7 million young people off their parents' plan by repealing health reform," the president said.

Playing on the Republicans’ derisive term for the law – "Obamacare" – the president said, "Maybe we should call his plan Romney Doesn't Care. Because I do care."

Speaking in front of thousands of enthusiastic college students is an unusual route for an incumbent to take while his opponent’s party is kicking off its convention, but the president took a full-steam-ahead approach, even taking a jab at the Tampa confab during his Iowa speech.

“It should be a pretty entertaining show,” Obama said. “It will be and I’m sure they’ll have some wonderful things to say about me,” he continued, referring to Republicans gathered in Tampa.

The president’s three-state college tour, which after Iowa takes him to Colorado and Virginia, taps into two key elements of his 2012 re-election strategy: winning a combination of battleground states as well as repeating his lopsided victory among college-age voters.

By the end of this trip, the president will have visited five colleges in August alone, all of them in key swing states: Rollins College in Florida; Capital University in Ohio; plus the three schools in Iowa, Colorado and Virginia.

The good news for Obama in recent polling? He’s still leading Mitt Romney 52 to 41 percent among young voters, a key part of his winning 2008 coalition.

BETTENDORF, IA -- Mitt Romney returned Wednesday to the core issue of his candidacy -- the economy -- in Iowa, the state that played host to the first nominating contest of the primary cycle.

Following two weeks of distractions, the GOP contender once again focused his remarks on the single animating issue of his campaign: the economy.

“Now the president promised that he was gonna cut the deficit in half. Yeah, it didn’t happen, did it? He’s more than doubled it. He’s added almost as much debt held by the public -- $5 trillion – as all the prior presidents of the country combined," Romney told an audience of more than 1,000 supporters at a factory here in Eastern Iowa. "You look at all of the debt of the country, why it’s about the size of our entire economy. This puts us on a path to become like Europe."

Since the selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has fought a running battle on the issue of Medicare, aired a series of debunked attacks on welfare reform, and been forced to wade into the controversy of Missouri Rep. Todd Akin's controversial comments on rape. Today in Iowa, he touched on none of the above, instead hammering President Obama over his stewardship of the economy.

Romney was helped in his economic case today by the release of the latest report by the Congressional Budget Office, which said that the 2012 fiscal year would be the fourth consecutive year in which the federal government ran a deficit greater than $1 trillion dollars, and which predicted unemployment would remain above 8 percent for the remainder of the year.

"You see, we don’t have to guess what the future looks like if we stay with the current president," Romney continued. "We can see what’s happening over in Europe."

Democrats quickly responded.

“Mitt Romney today said that a Romney-Ryan White House would make America stronger, but we know that’s not true," Obama campaign spokesperson Lis Smith said in a statement, calling the Republican platform "the same failed formula that crashed the economy and devastated the middle class in the first place.”

With President Obama campaigning at a high school in Nevada today to tout his education policies, Romney also engaged on the subject, calling for an education system that was competitive on the international stage, and for putting students and their parents ahead of the teachers unions, a favorite Romney bogeyman.

Even Romney's attack lines on education had an economic tinge to them.

"You have got to make sure that we create jobs in this country so that people coming out of school can get a good job, Romney said, laying out his education goals with advice to President Obama. "You don't max out their credit card if you will by giving them something that they're having to pay for down the road plus interest, what you do is you make sure that we do not pass on trillions of dollars in debts to the next generation."

DAVENPORT, IA -- At every stop on his three-day bus tour through Iowa, President Obama told audiences how he’d visited a slew of small towns, looking to reach as many voters as he could in his bid to clinch this key swing state.

He was also quick to point out – perhaps as part of that strategy – that he drank an awful lot of beer.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign event Aug. 15 in Davenport, Iowa, during a three day campaign bus tour through Iowa.

The cold ones started flowing Monday night, when Obama made an unscheduled stop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, forgoing the Butter Cow to head straight to the Bud Tent.

At first the president seemed intent only on boosting the sales of Bud purveyor Mike Cunningham, who said his business had been shut down since 5pm so that the Secret Service could secure the area.

“Everyone who’s over 21, you gotta buy a beer!” Obama told the crowd.

But when a man asked the president if the brews were on him -- prompting a cheer of “Four More Beers!” (a take on the incumbent’s campaign cheer, "four more years") -- the president obliged.

“I’ll tell you what, except for the [guy with the] Romney sign, I’ll buy beers for 10 people,” he said, handing out drink tickets to the thirsty onlookers.

Finally the president made his way back to Cunningham, who handed him a full plastic cup and an on-message t-shirt: “Save Water, Drink Beer.”

The president clearly wanted the crowds at subsequent stops to know that he had consumed the Great American Beverage, as well as one of its culinary counterparts: pork on a stick.

Obama's endeavors shed light on the nexus between pints and politics, as candidates seek to prove that they’re relatable by answering that time-honored question: “Would you have a beer with the guy?”

A PRIMARY BEER-OFF
This isn’t the first time Obama has sought to answer that question in the affirmative.

In the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both tried to prove they were the most ordinary Joe/Jane by knocking a few back with the locals.

At a stop in a Pennsylvania bar in March of 2009, the president downed the regional favorite – Yuengling, the local favorite – but got caught not really knowing what it was.

“What do they call it? A Yuengling?” he asked a male patron.

Perhaps not believing him, the man repeated the word, adding, “Like you didn’t know.”

“Is it expensive, though?” Obama continued. “Wanna make sure it’s not some designer beer or something.”

(Fast forward two years to a friendly Olympic hockey wager between the U.S. and Canada in which now-President Obama bet a case of – you guessed it – Yuengling).

Not to be out-drunk by her primary opponent, Hillary Clinton sidled up to the bar at Bronko’s in Crown Point, Indiana a few weeks later, downing two mugs of Old Style beer and a shot of Crown Royal whiskey as cameras flashed.

Such photo ops are unlikely to come from the challenger this campaign cycle, as Obama’s Republican challenger Mitt Romney abstains from alcohol for religious reasons.

THE PRESIDENT’S ‘BEER GARDEN’ STRATEGY
In 2011, Obama divulged that the White House does in fact have its own brewery, which he was asked about during a Tuesday stop at a coffee shop in Knoxville, Iowa.

To convince the curious on-looker, Obama asked a campaign aide to go to his bus and grab a bottle of White House Honey Ale as a token of authenticity.

It’s a pretty unique campaign trick. Obama may not be the only politician with a brewery (he shares that distinction with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper), but his is the only one with the presidential seal on it.

Another perk of the nation’s top job? A 24/7 campaign video team, on hand to document every moment that captures the incumbent in a positive light, including his three beer-centric “OTR,” or off-the-record, stops in Iowa.

The trip to the state fair seemed to be Obama’s favorite (or the one he thought would resonate with voters the most) because he was still regaling audiences about it two days after it happened.

At a rally Wednesday in Dubuque, his wife Michelle, who had joined him on the podium for the day, asked him what he had consumed at the fair.

“Pork chops and beer,” he responded, grinning.

“He’s so pleased with himself,” his wife quipped with a smile. 

Among Iowa voters, it seemed to be working.

Waiting for the president to arrive in Davenport for his final speech of the trip, John Gilkison, 56, said that he thought Obama’s beer drinking made him seem like a “normal person.”

“It just makes him human,” he said. “Makes him seem more open.”

Gilkison’s friend, John Wisor, 45, was particularly enthusiastic about the president’s public displays of drinking – not a surprise, given that he owned the bar across the street from where the president was about to speak. 

Inviting the president over, Wisor said, “I hope he does come over and have a beer.”

Six-column, large-font, front page Des Moines Register headline: “Wind credit likely to stay: Obama promotes its extension; Iowa delegation cautiously optimistic.”

The story’s lead: “All the huff and puff on the campaign trail in Iowa aside, it’s likely that the wind energy tax credit will pass this fall, Iowans who follow the issue say. It’s a topic that Iowa voters typically don’t bring up. But President Barack Obama loves to talk about it because it gives him an opening to bash GOP rival Mitt Romney for being opposed to an incentive that all of Iowa’s top politicians consider important.”

Note: The entire Iowa delegation, including Republicans, supports it. Romney is not, and his staff doubled down on that in the story: “Romney’s Iowa campaign aide, Shawn McCoy, said Tuesday that Romney is a strong supporter of wind power. The distinction is that Romney draws the line at government subsidies, contending that all sources of energy should compete on their own merits. The tax credit cost the federal government $1.6 billion this year.”

The New York Times: “When Charlotte first emerged as the top contender to host the Democratic convention, its lead cheerleader was James E. Rogers, the outspoken chief executive of the hometown utility, Duke Energy. He promised to be a public face and a private fund-raiser for the effort.  Mr. Rogers has not only solicited donations but has also arranged for his company to donate office space and guarantee a loan to the convention committee.”

But: “The intersection of Duke Energy’s interests and its support for the convention is testing Mr. Obama’s pledge to free the party’s gathering from business and lobbyist support. The situation is a microcosm of a larger issue that Mr. Obama’s campaign has faced. It has tried to balance the president’s longtime pledge to reduce the influence of special interests in politics with his real-world need to raise the huge amounts of money that modern campaigns require, at times in ways that seem to contradict those pledges.”

The Romney campaign called Joe Biden’s “chains” comments a “new low.” Andrea Saul statement: “In case anyone was wondering just how low President Obama could go in his campaign for re-election, we now know he’s willing to say that Governor Romney wants to put people back in chains. Whether its accusing Mitt Romney of being a felon, having been responsible for a woman’s tragic death or now wanting to put people in chains, there’s no question that because of the President’s failed record he’s been reduced to a desperate campaign based on division and demonization.”

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R) said on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports yesterday that Biden’s comments were "code word that the Republicans are trying to be racial in their programs. That’s ridiculous."

Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said on the show that the campaign agrees with Biden’s sentiment. “The bottom line is that we have no problem with those comments.” Biden’s team pushed back saying Republicans on Capitol Hill have been using the word “unshackling” when it comes to regulations on business. “The Vice President has often used a similar metaphor to describe the need to ‘unshackle’ the middle class. Today’s comments were a derivative of those remarks, describing the devastating impact letting Wall Street write its own rules again would have on middle class families. We find the Romney campaign’s outrage over the Vice President’s comments today hypocritical, particularly in light of their own candidate’s stump speech questioning the President’s patriotism. Now, let’s return to that ‘substantive’ debate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan promised 72 hours ago, but quickly abandoned.”

Of course, there was also President Obama invoking Mitt Romney’s dog-on-roof story. He was hitting Romney on the wind tax credit in Iowa and cited Romney saying, “You can't drive a car with a windmill on it." Then Obama then ad-libbed: "I don't know he's actually tried that. I know he's had other things on his car."

The Des Moines Register: “Romney has gotten much ribbing since he shared an anecdote about how the family dog, Seamus, rode happily in a carrier attached to the roof of the car during a vacation.”

The White House has a brewery? “In perhaps the most startling revelation so far in Obama’s three-day bus tour across Iowa, it was revealed Tuesday that the White House brews its own beer, and that the presidential bus is stocked with bottles of that beer,” the Des Moines Register notes. 

OSKALOOSA, IA – President Obama seemed to reference the infamous tale of the Romney family dog riding on the roof of the presumptive GOP nominee's car for most of a road trip during an extended riff here on wind energy.

Criticizing Mitt Romney’s opposition to wind energy production tax credits, Obama also went personal, bringing up an anecdote about a Romney family vacation.

Obama mocked what he said was Romney’s wind energy policy, quoting him from a March 6 speech in Zanesville, Ohio when he said, “you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.”

“That’s what he said about wind power,” Obama told about 850 supporters standing outside a classic, American flag-bedecked farmhouse at the Nelson Pioneer Farm Museum here.

“Now, I don’t know if he’s actually tried that. I know he’s had other things on his car,” Obama said as the crowd applauded, understanding the reference.

Liberal critics and Democratic groups supporting the president have pounced on the Seamus story to criticize Romney's character, suggesting Romney is insensitive, but this is the first time the president himself has referenced it himself. (Obama aides have previously invoked the story.)

But after the quick Seamus allusion, the president went right back to accusing Romney of not understanding the importance of wind energy in Iowa.

“If he wants to learn something about wind, all he’s got to do is pay attention to what you’ve been doing here in Iowa,” the president said, noting that the wind industry now supports 7,000 jobs in Iowa.

And new statistics from a Department of Energy report on wind power, which the president referred to Tuesday, also reflect the importance of wind as a policy and political issue: it’s one of the top two states when it comes to in-state wind energy generation, generating 18.8 percent in 2011, second only to South Dakota.

“If [Romney] knew what you’ve been doing, he’d know that 20 percent of Iowa’s electricity now runs on wind,” Obama said to applause. “Powering our homes and our factories, and our businesses in a way that is clean and renewable.”

In a statement the Romney campaign said Obama's Seamus reference showed that the president "will do anything to distract from his abysmal record."

"After sanctimoniously complaining about making a 'big election about small things,' President Obama continues to embarrass himself and diminish his office with un-presidential behavior," campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. 

After a series of local interviews here, the president heads to campaign events in Marshalltown and Waterloo, continuing to wind his way east through the state.

Florida, Florida, Florida. The Tampa Bay Times: “Mitt Romney returns to Florida with Medicare back as central issue.” The paper’s lead: “Romney mentioned the word Medicare only twice Monday in his first Florida stop after picking a running mate, but no one doubts it will be a central part of the campaign fight in this must-win state… Vice presidential pick Paul Ryan, who advocates fundamentally restructuring Medicare, has introduced the subject of entitlement reform like never before in a presidential race.”

The Washington Post: “Ryan stirs cheers, heckling in Midwest.”

The Des Moines Register's editorial board goes after Ryan: “Ryan deserves credit for confronting this issue, which most other members of Congress would as soon ignore. He is right, in principle, that federal spending must be reduced. He is right, in principle, that spending on federal entitlements must be reined in. Ryan’s cure is in many respects as bad as the disease, however. He would convert the highly effective Medicare program into a voucher system for future retirees. He would sharply cut Medicaid funding and let the states figure out how to provide medical care for the poor. His proposal to cut spending on food stamps drew criticism from his own church in a statement from the U.S. Catholic bishops.”

Ryan plan primer: “Under the Ryan plan, for example, taxpayers in the lowest fifth of income would see their taxes increase slightly,” the Boston Globe writes. “Those earning $40,000 to $70,000 would get a $739 cut, and those in the top 0.1 percent would get a $773,000 cut. But financing for those cuts remains vague; the Ryan plan said they will be paid for by eliminating various unnamed tax deductions.”

More: “Ryan also believes that, even while cutting tax rates, revenues would go from 15.5 percent of GDP to 19 percent in 2030. The effectiveness of cutting tax rates in anticipation of boosting economic activity has been the subject of debate for years and has escalated since the Bush-era tax cuts have been followed by large deficits. By failing to say which tax deductions would be eliminated, Ryan’s plan has left analysts to wonder whether that would lead to the end of the deduction for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, or other big-ticket items. Nor does the Ryan plan provide details about many spending cuts.”

“The Ryan budget would slash food stamps by $134 billion over 10 years, affecting 47 million recipients… A typical family of four could lose about $90 a month in food stamps…. At the same time, Ryan vows to protect defense spending. Indeed, if his plan is coupled with Romney’s vow to increase Pentagon dollars, there would be little or no room for nondefense spending outside of programs such as Social Security….”

What about Medicare? Eligibility goes from 65 to 67. Changes for those younger than 55 would take place beginning in 2023. There would be a voucher program that seniors could use to buy insurance in a private insurance marketplace, similar to the Obama health law exchange system, which would impact far fewer people, because most people already have health insurance through their companies. Obama’s exchange would only affect those without insurance who make too much to be on Medicaid. Ryan’s would affect anyone over 67.

Seniors would have the choice of staying with the “existing, fee-for-service system,” something Ryan did not offer under earlier versions.

And here’s the catch: “The risk is that if private competition in the Medicare marketplace did not hold down insurance costs, government vouchers — whose annual increases would be capped — could cease to cover plan premiums over time. In this case, more people would chose the traditional fee-for-service model and cost savings for the government would not materialize.”

And this little-known fact: “It aims to save $205 billion between 2013 and 2022, on top of the $700 billion in Medicare spending reductions contained in Obama’s national health care law. Though his plan calls for repeal of the health care law, Ryan would keep and expand Obama’s Medicare cuts, a departure from Romney’s plan to wipe out the law and his sharp criticism of the Medicare cuts.” And it would slash federal spending by $810 billion for Medicaid over just the next 10 years, much faster than Ryan’s proposal for Medicare. And there would no longer be the fee-for-service Medicaid system, instead it would be block-granted to states, who then could do whatever they wanted with the money.

The L.A. Times has its own breakdown of Ryan’s plan. Its chart of how much people would pay in taxes – it cuts for the rich, raises on the poor:

Top 1% - $155,808 cut
Top 20% - $13,907 cut
Middle 20% - $739 decrease
Next 20% - $149 decrease
Lowest 20% - $159 tax INCREASE

“Under Ryan's plan, which has passed the Republican-controlled House twice in slightly different versions, the Internal Revenue Service would tax the wealthiest Americans less, but many of the poorest ones more; Medicare would be transformed; Medicaid would be cut by about a third; and all functions of government other than those health programs, Social Security and the military would shrink to levels not seen since the 1930s,” it writes.

AP: “Mitt Romney says there may be differences between his own budget plan and running mate Paul Ryan's, but he isn’t volunteering any of them.”

Spending hypocrisy? “In 2009, as Representative Paul Ryan was railing against President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package as a ‘wasteful spending spree,’ he wrote at least four letters to Obama’s secretary of energy asking that millions of dollars from the program be granted to a pair of Wisconsin conservation groups, according to documents obtained by The Globe. The advocacy appeared to pay off; both groups were awarded the economic recovery funds — one receiving a $20 million grant to help thousands of local businesses and homes improve their energy efficiency, agency documents show. … The documents show that Ryan’s attempts to take advantage of the stimulus funds even after he voted against them was more expansive than previously reported.”

The Romney campaign did not comment this time around. When Ryan was first called out for this in 2010, a spokesman said: “If Congressman Ryan is asked to help a Wisconsin entity applying for existing federal grant funds, he does not believe flawed policy should get in the way of doing his job and providing a legitimate constituent service to his employers.”

“Mitt Romney held a campaign event Monday night at a Miami juice shop owned by a convicted cocaine trafficker,” AP writes, adding, “Appearing with Romney was Sen. Marco Rubio. Both men handed out juices to an excited crowd after brief remarks. Romney was filming a campaign ad at the juice shop, aides said.” The owner “told the Miami New Times that the Secret Service vetted everything about him when the Romney campaign asked to use his fruit and vegetable stand and that they knew about his criminal record. ‘Here in Miami there are a lot people with money who have had problems with the law,’ Bermudez told the New Times. ‘Thankfully, we all have the opportunity in this country to re-enter society when we've done something wrong.’”

He wouldn’t be allowed to re-enter a voting booth, though, if Romney had his way. “As a felon, [he] wouldn't be eligible to vote in Florida unless the governor and the Cabinet restore his rights.”

“The Obama administration weighed in on affirmative action for the first time at the Supreme Court on Monday, urging that university admissions preferences for qualified black and Latino students be upheld,” the L.A. Times reports. “‘Race is one of many characteristics (including socioeconomic status, work experience and other factors) that admissions officials may consider in evaluating the contributions that an applicant would make to the university,’ U.S. Solicitor Gen. Donald Verrilli Jr. said in his brief, siding with the University of Texas.”

Six-column, two-deck front page Des Moines Register headline: “Obama, Ryan outline differences in Iowa.”

The Des Moines Register: “President Barack Obama kicked off his three-day Iowa tour with a clarion call to view this election as a stark choice about America’s future — and ended the day in the Bud Tent at the Iowa State Fair. Before he got to his Bud Light and pork chop, there was plenty of red meat politics, and lots of idyllic Iowa scenes. He stopped at a farm to talk about the drought and rode by scores of wind towers, hundreds of people waving American flags, and thousands of acres of drought-shriveled corn.”

And there’s this: “Iowans look anew at Medicare.”

“He began a three-day bus tour through the state today on less sure footing, with polls showing Iowa up for grabs in November. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sent his newly-announced running mate, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, to the Iowa State Fair today to try to steal some of Obama's thunder,” Newsday writes. “Obama is using Ryan's presence to make the argument that Republicans are obstructionists, saying the lawmaker is ‘one of the leaders of Congress standing in the way’ of passing a farm bill that would provide relief from the drought.”

Obama will be in New Hampshire this weekend.

Channeling First Read, AP writes: “In his run for a second term, President Barack Obama had an opponent before he had an opponent: House Republicans. They shellacked him in the midterm elections, blocked much of his legislative agenda and pushed economic views that are wildly different from his. Mitt Romney put a campaign face on all that for Obama: Paul Ryan.”

First Lady Michelle Obama and Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas were on the Tonight Show. Obama teased Douglas about her penchant for fast food and talked about that Kiss Cam moment.

DUBUQUE, Iowa -- Staying on the offensive against Mitt Romney for a second day on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said that the nominee's attempts to explain his record of aiding companies at investment firm Bain Capital amounted to a "cruel joke."

Referencing the Romney campaign's efforts to distinguish between "offshoring" jobs and "outsourcing" them domestically, Biden mocked the differentiation as a heartless and irrelevant one to those whose job was lost at the hands of a company like Bain.

"If you're looking for work, that's a pretty cruel joke," he said. "I can picture one guy standing next to another guy in the unemployment line and saying, 'Hey John, did you get offshored or outsourced?'"

The gag won the desired effect of guffaws from the crowd of over 400 at a picturesque riverfront event in Dubuque.

In a lengthy address, the vice president echoed his attacks on the GOP nominee from a similar speech in Waterloo yesterday, poking fun at the former CEO's "Swiss bank account" and caricaturing Romney's global reach at Bain.

"You got to give him credit. He created a hell of a lot of jobs in Singapore, China, India," Biden said. "The problem is the guys in my old neighborhood, they don't live in Singapore, they don't live in China."

His speech relied heavily on his own biography here in a part of the state where local Democrats joke he might as well have been born and raised. He conceded at one point that his own blue-collar roots are sometimes overblown even by his own boss.

"Barack makes me sound like I climbed out of a coal mine in Scranton with a lunch bucket," he said to laughter.  "No one in my family worked in a factory."

Despite the light-hearted delivery of some of his jabs at Romney, Biden also grimly described the woes of those who remain jobless as the economy chugs out of a devastating downturn.

Offering a mix of positive news about the economy and sympathy for Americans who are still struggling, one of his family anecdotes struck a pessimistic note.

" My grandpa used to say - he's from Scranton -  he'd say "Joey, when the guy in Dumore, the next town over, when the guy in Dunmore's outta work it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression.'"

"It's a depression for millions and millions of Americans," Biden continued. "It's a depression."

The vice president will return to Washington this afternoon after another stop in Clinton, IA.

WATERLOO, IA -- The outsourcing attack continues, with Joe Biden wielding the rhetorical cudgel today.

"You got to give Mitt Romney credit. He's a job creator," Biden said Tuesday at an eastern Iowa UAW hall, pausing for dramatic effect from a knowingly chuckling crowd of over 400. "In Singapore. And China. And India."

On the first stop of a two-day swing through the Hawkeye State, Biden skewered the GOP nominee for his tenure at investment firm Bain Capital, repeatedly calling Romney a "pioneer" of shipping American jobs overseas.

"Here's the bottom line, folks: Bain and their companies, they made a great deal of money outsourcing and off-shoring American jobs," the vice president said. "Yeah, they made a lot of money, but in the process they devastated whole American communities here in the heartland and back in my home state of Delaware."

The attack echoes one made by the Obama team in a wave of new ads running in swing states Ohio and Virginia as well as here in Iowa. "Mitt Romney never stood up to China," a narrator intones ominously in one of the commercials. "All he's ever done is send them our jobs."

Biden said that the wealth -- along with its attached strings of privilege -- that Romney accumulated from his tenure at Bain led to an "out of touch" nominee without an understanding of how real Americans keep track of their families' balance sheets.

"Did you ever think you'd be choosing between two people running for president, one of whom has a Swiss bank account?" he asked an incredulous crowd.

The vice president, who coughed and cleared his throat frequently throughout his remarks, noted that he was suffering from a cold. But the illness did not keep him from his trademark bellows in defense of the "American worker."

"His whole career, this good man Mitt Romney has looked at American workers, looked at all of you and the places I come from, looked at us as part of the problem," he said. "The president and I don't see American workers as part of the problem. We see them as the heart of the solution."

Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul called Biden's claims "misleading" and dinged Obama for rewarding foreign-owned energy companies with stimulus money.

"Vice President Biden today doubled down on the Obama campaign's same misleading attacks in an effort to distract voters from the President's disastrous economic record," she said. "President Obama thinks that economic development means sending billions of taxpayer dollars to foreign-owned companies and rewarding donors with money from his failed stimulus program."

Waterloo, home to a large John Deere factory, has enjoyed fairly low joblessness compared to the rest of the country. Recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the unemployment rate in the area under five percent; it peaked in 2009 at 7.5 percent.

Biden noted that success Tuesday, winning cheers for recalling the Obama administration's efforts to jumpstart the auto industry and other parts of the manufacturing sector.

The vice president will remain in Iowa tomorrow, with events scheduled in Dubuque and Clinton.

CUSTER, SD -- South Dakota Sen. John Thune said he's open to serving as Mitt Romney's running mate, telling reporters in his home state on Wednesday that it would be tough to ever rule out that option.

"I don’t think you ever rule out or say no to opportunities to public service if you are really interested in making a difference for your country, you want to put your gifts and abilities to the highest and best use,” Thune told reporters following a town hall in the local firehouse here. But, he added, "I don’t expect that to happen but I don’t think you never say never when it comes to serving your country."

Thune seems to have shifted in the way he's spoken about about his contact with the Romney campaign. Just two weeks ago, the senator told The Hill, he had yet to be contacted by the Romney campaign. But today, Thune said, “We talk to him all the time.”

Other than knowing who is leading the search, Romney’s vice presidential selection process has been rather secretive. Thune’s comments come on the same day one of Romney’s top advisers, John Sununu, gave National Reviewone of the first glimpses into the grueling process. Sununu said Thune is “on the list for consideration” for VP.

The small town senator, who even flirted with running for president himself this cycle, seems happy with his current position as the third-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate.

Being vice president for Thune, he says, is “not a job I aspire to.”

"I like the job I have. I look forward to working with a president, as a member of the United States Senate, that is interested in solving problems," he said. "I think that Gov. Romney and his team will make a very good choice. I think, some of the names I am hearing banging about out there are really good people."

Sources say the senator may soon hit the campaign trail for Romney, perhaps in neighboring Iowa. Thune endorsed Romney in Des Moines, Iowa just before Thanksgiving -– weeks before many other prominent Republicans picked a candidate.

“I came out and supported him [Romney] early because I thought he…represented our best opportunity to win in November and also the guy who was best experienced and had the best skills to govern our country for the next few years, which is not going to be easy,” Thune said, standing in front of a Custer fire truck the day after Romney secured the required 1,144 delegates for the party’s nomination. “I am delighted he has crossed that line and is going to be our nominee because I think it is going to be a great race this fall.”