President Obama arrives in Seattle for first (and maybe only) visit of 2011

Fol­low­ing a four and a half hour cross coun­try flight from Joint Base Andrews, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma touched down in the real Wash­ing­ton late this morn­ing to begin a mul­ti-day Left Coast fundrais­ing tour.

This is Oba­ma’s third offi­cial vis­it to the Ever­green State as Pres­i­dent; he made two trips out here last year (in August and Octo­ber) on behalf of Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, who defeat­ed peren­ni­al Repub­li­can office-seek­er Dino Rossi in the state’s Novem­ber 2010 U.S. Sen­ate con­test. (Rossi has since dis­ap­peared from pub­lic view).

Oba­ma was greet­ed at Boe­ing Field by Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, and Seat­tle May­or Mike McGinn, along with U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Norm Dicks. After talk­ing with them for a cou­ple min­utes, Oba­ma jogged over to shake hands with the assem­bled wel­com­ing com­mit­tee — a crowd of about fifty or so peo­ple behind met­al bar­ri­cades next to the press riser.

One child even got a high-five.

Oba­ma then climbed into the pres­i­den­tial lim­ou­sine (nick­named “The Beast”) and his motor­cade took off for his first fundrais­ing event in Med­i­na — a brunch at for­mer Microsoft exec­u­tive Jon Shirley’s residence.

The brunch drew six­ty-five peo­ple, we’re told. Assum­ing at least thir­ty cou­ples paid $35,800 to get in, that means the event raised at least $1,074,000.

Among those in atten­dance: Bill Neukom, the San Fran­cis­co Giants gen­er­al man­ag­er; Jim Sine­gal, CEO of Cost­co, and Ger­ald Grin­stein, strate­gic direc­tor Madrona Ven­ture Group, pre­vi­ous­ly CEO of Delta.

In his remarks to donors at the event (which took place in what was described to NPI as an “airy, vast rec­tan­gu­lar space, like enter­ing a wing at a con­tem­po­rary art muse­um”, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma warned that Amer­i­ca can­not afford to elect a Repub­li­can as pres­i­dent. Doing so would ush­er in “an approach to gov­ern­ment that would fun­da­men­tal­ly crip­ple Amer­i­ca in meet­ing the chal­lenges of the 21st Cen­tu­ry,” he said. Oba­ma point­ed to the ongo­ing bud­get debate in Con­gress as part of “a con­stant ide­o­log­i­cal push­back” that he has had to deal with since his inauguration.

“It is not just a nation­al cri­sis it is an inter­na­tion­al cri­sis that we’ve been man­ag­ing for the last three years,” the Pres­i­dent reflect­ed. “Domes­ti­cal­ly, we still have a lot more to do to heal this econ­o­my and to deal with some of the struc­tur­al prob­lems that exist­ed even before the finan­cial cri­sis hit.”

“My hope when I came into office that was because we were in cri­sis that the oth­er side would respond by say­ing now is the time for all of us to pull togeth­er,” he said. “That was not the deci­sion they made so from the moment I took office what we’ve seen is a con­stant ide­o­log­i­cal push­back against any kind of sen­si­ble reforms that would make our econ­o­my work bet­ter and give peo­ple more opportunity.”

He added, “We’re see­ing it even now. As we speak there’s a debate going on in Con­gress about whether dis­as­ter relief fund­ing should be grant­ed as part of the over­all bud­get to keep the gov­ern­ment open.”

“What makes it worse is that some of the Repub­li­cans who are oppos­ing this dis­as­ter relief it’s their con­stituents who’ve been hit hard­er than any­one by these nat­ur­al disasters.”

The Pres­i­dent said his mes­sage to Repub­li­cans is sim­ple: “I’m pre­pared to work with you but these games have to stop.”

He end­ed his remarks by talk­ing about the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial election.

“This is going to be espe­cial­ly hard because a lot of peo­ple are dis­cour­aged and a lot of peo­ple are dis­il­lu­sioned. … But I’m deter­mined because there’s too much at stake. The alter­na­tive, I think, is an approach to gov­ern­ment that would fun­da­men­tal­ly crip­ple Amer­i­ca in meet­ing the chal­lenges of the 21st Cen­tu­ry and that’s not the kind of soci­ety that I want to bequeath to Malia and Sasha, and your chil­dren and your grandchildren.”

The Pres­i­den­t’s remarks last­ed about ten min­utes, we’re told. After spend­ing less than an hour in Med­i­na, the motor­cade depart­ed the East­side and swept onto State Route 520 for a ten minute trip to Seat­tle’s Para­mount The­ater, where eigh­teen hun­dred sup­port­ers had gath­ered for a fundrais­ing luncheon.

CONTINUED: At the Para­mount, the Pres­i­dent was intro­duced by by Bill Rus­sell and Lenny Wilkens, two of the Seat­tle Super­Son­ics’ most pres­ti­gious alumni.

The Pres­i­dent had to say thank you a grand total of six times before the enthu­si­as­tic Democ­rats in the audi­ence were will­ing to take their seats.

Due to a tech­ni­cal prob­lem of some kind, the Pres­i­dent was unable to use the teleprompter that had been set up onstage to give his address. But he did­n’t seem to need it. He thanked Rus­sell and Wilkens, rec­og­nized Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire, and sev­er­al of the state’s U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, includ­ing Norm Dicks, Jay Inslee, and Jim McDer­mott. (Nei­ther Pat­ty Mur­ray nor Maria Cantwell was in atten­dance, or else they would like­ly have received a shout-out as well).

The Pres­i­dent wast­ed almost no time in issu­ing a con­dem­na­tion of Repub­li­cans’ views on the econ­o­my, cas­ti­gat­ing the right wing for con­tin­u­ing to sup­port an agen­da that has clear­ly failed America.

“The ques­tion is not whether this coun­try has been going through tough times,” the Pres­i­dent said. ” The ques­tion is where are we going next. ”

“We can either go back to the same ideas that the oth­er sides is ped­dling — old worn-out ideas that were tried through­out the last decade, where cor­po­ra­tions get to write their own rules, and those of us who’ve been most for­tu­nate get to keep all our tax breaks, and we aban­don our com­mit­ment to car­ing for the vul­ner­a­ble, and we aban­don our com­mit­ment to invest­ing in the future and invest­ing in infra­struc­ture and invest­ing in edu­ca­tion and basic research — or we can build an Amer­i­ca that we talked about in 2008.”

Oba­ma then began high­light­ing some of the accom­plish­ments of his pres­i­den­cy. He remind­ed the audi­ence that his admin­is­tra­tion suc­cess­ful­ly res­cued the auto indus­try (in 2009, GM and Chrysler were on the verge of col­lapse, but were saved by the taxpayers).

He also tout­ed sev­er­al key pieces of leg­is­la­tion he has signed into law: the  Lily Led­bet­ter Fair Pay Act, the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill, and repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

Much of his speech con­sist­ed of a pitch for the Amer­i­can Jobs Act, intro­duced dur­ing a joint address to Con­gress ear­li­er this month. Oba­ma wants the bill passed imme­di­ate­ly, but House Repub­li­cans have sig­naled they want to bury it, because it does­n’t jibe with their rigid ide­o­log­i­cal views.

Those views, of course, do not reflect tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can val­ues… and the Pres­i­dent was, thank­ful­ly, hap­py to point that out.

“This notion that the only thing to do to restore our pros­per­i­ty is to elim­i­nate envi­ron­men­tal rules, and bust unions, and make sure that we’re giv­ing tax breaks to the folks who are most for­tu­nate and tell every­body else that they’re on their own — that’s not who we are.  That’s not the sto­ry of Amer­i­ca,” Oba­ma said at one point.

The Pres­i­dent end­ed his remarks by try­ing to ral­ly the crowd.

“I need you guys to shake off any dol­drums.  I need you to decide right here and right now — and I need you to talk to your friends and your neigh­bors and your cowork­ers — you need to tell them, you know what, we’re not fin­ished yet.  We’ve got more work to do.”

“We are tougher than the times that we live in. We are big­ger than the small pol­i­tics that we’ve been wit­ness­ing. We are a peo­ple who write our own des­tiny, and it is ful­ly with­in our pow­er to write it once more.”

After step­ping away from the podi­um, the Pres­i­dent shook hands for sev­er­al min­utes before depart­ing the Para­mount. His motor­cade was on its way out of Seat­tle just twelve min­utes fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of his speech.

The pro­ces­sion of vehi­cles arrived at the Boe­ing Field tar­mac at 3:37 PM. By 3:48 PM, Air Force One was ready for take­off, though it did not depart imme­di­ate­ly, in order to keep the air­space clear for a Life­Flight that we under­stand was inbound to Har­borview Med­ical Cen­ter. Short­ly before four o’clock, Air Force One lift­ed off for a two-hour flight to San Jose, con­clud­ing the Pres­i­den­t’s visit.