“As important as President Obama’s achievements have been for health care and the economy, for example, he will be remembered most for what he did about global climate change,” PCAP Executive Director William Becker said in a release. “If the United States and the rest of the international community don’t act aggressively, climate change will undo many of the accomplishments on which the president spent so much time and political capital during his first two years in office.”

Gary Hart

Hart and PCAP in August urged Obama to use his executive order powers ahead of November’s United Nations global climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, after the U.S. Senate last session failed to pass any significant energy bills or even consider the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House.

“Even though Congress has decided not to take action on this matter in this calendar year, the president is going to have to represent the United States of America before the court of public opinion,” Hart said at the time. “We believe these actions in the form of executive orders and proclamations can demonstrate not only to Americans but to the world what leadership is.”

The group Monday underscored the national security and health benefits of building a “low-carbon economy,” which it maintains will help stabilize areas of the world that national security experts and former military analysts say will only become more volatile and deadly for Americans as the planet warms.

PCAP Monday did highlight some of the Obama administration’s accomplishments on climate change, but the group’s latest report outlines a laundry list of other actions the White House can take independent of what it terms congressional paralysis on the topic. Here’s that list as outlined in a PCAP press release on Monday:

• Convene the nation’s best minds to create policy roadmaps to a clean energy economy. Becker noted that although current law requires presidents to send Congress detailed national energy policy plans every two years, none has been done since 1998;

• Find new ways for the federal government to support climate action by states and local governments. Effective climate action will require active cooperation between all levels of government, Becker said;

• Continue using federal procurement, including the defense budget, to bolster markets for low-carbon goods and services;

• Take additional steps — for example, better management of land-based pollutants — to protect America’s limited supplies of fresh water and the health of its ocean and coastal resources;

• Accelerate efforts to create a national climate adaptation plan. According to the PCAP report, many of the natural disasters occurring worldwide now are recognized by scientists, heads of state and leaders in the insurance industry as proof that climate disruption already is underway;

• Take the case for climate action directly to the American people and communicate a compelling vision of the nation’s future.

University of Colorado-Denver Wirth Chair professor Gary Hart.

“Even though Congress has decided not to take action on this matter in this calendar year, the president is going to have to represent the United States of America before the court of public opinion,” Hart said. “We believe these actions in the form of executive orders and proclamations can demonstrate not only to Americans but to the world what leadership is.”

PCAP outlined Obama’s aggressive course of action – a potentially risky short-term course ahead of critical mid-term elections for Democrats – in a five-point plan called “Plan B: Near-Term Presidential Actions For Energy & Environmental Leadership.”

While the U.S. House last summer narrowly passed a climate bill and just last week passed an energy reform and oil-spill cleanup package, the U.S. Senate has been gridlocked on both issues.

PCAP Executive Director William Becker said the first and perhaps most important part of the plan is getting the Obama administration to further empower states to continue to carry the day on climate issues. More than 30 states currently have renewable energy standards like the one Colorado adopted this past legislative session, calling for 30 percent of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources by the year 2020.

“Rather than curtailing or preempting state authority as some in Congress have proposed, we really need to support state leadership by, among other things, creating new incentives for states to lead under the programs that the administration controls,” Becker said.

Tom Peterson, president of the Center for Climate Strategies, said a recent analysis by his group concluded that if all 50 states adopted a package of certain key climate policies, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions could be cut to 27 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Those reductions, the analysis found, would create 2.5 million new jobs and add $134 billion to the nation’s GDP.

According to a release Thursday touting the PCAP report, these are the other four key areas Obama needs to take action on:

• Declare a “war on waste” to make America the most energy-efficient industrial economy in the world by 2035. During his presidential campaign, Obama cited a United Nations report ranking America 22nd in energy efficiency among the world’s biggest economies.
• Push for a new national transportation policy that emphasizes low-carbon mobility choices, and start work on a national low-carbon standard for transportation fuels.
• Eliminate fossil-energy subsidies under the administration’s control, including unnecessary research subsidies for fossil-energy industries and cut-rate leases and royalty fees for oil and gas companies.
• Include the restoration of local ecosystems in the administration’s emerging climate adaptation strategy, re-establishing their ability to protect communities from flooding, heat waves, drought and other predicted impacts of climate change.

Terry Tamminen, former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and special advisor to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said other states can and should follow California’s lead on climate change issues. Colorado’s renewable energy standard, for instance, is second only to California’s goal of 33 percent by 2020.

“In California, we are 40 percent more energy efficient than the rest of the county,” Tamminen said, “and any of you who have been to California know that’s not because we don’t have our flat-panel TVs and Jacuzzis and air conditioners in the desert. It’s because of measures that we’ve taken to make appliances and other uses of electricity much more efficient and to work with our utilities to incentivize conservation instead of just selling more electricity.”

David Orr, professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College, said there is a great deal of precedent for presidents using their executive order powers in times of national emergency, including Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression and George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11. Environmentally, he cited the 1970 formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency based on an executive order by Richard Nixon.

“In our political system, presidential leadership is absolutely essential to move any large-scale change,” Orr said. “No one else really can do it. The president has the power of the bully pulpit and has the power to put a very specific program before Congress and before the American public, in this case through executive orders.”

“Sit and watch us for seven days—just watch the floor. You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing. When I’m in the chair, I sit there thinking, I wonder what they’re doing in China right now?”

That’s the first of many gems Bennet tossed up for New Yorker writer George Packer, who chronicles the deadlocked chamber in excruciating detail in the coming edition of the magazine. Packer’s story on the Senate will hit newsstands roughly the same day Bennet will discover whether Colorado Democrats choose to send him back there.

On disillusion:

There were times when [Va. freshman Mark] Warner wondered if anyone had ever quit in the first year. Michael Bennet said, “We find ourselves at a moment in our history when the questions are huge ones, not small ones, and where things have been put off for a really long period of time.” He mentioned the national debt, energy policy, and the financial crisis. “Yet you have a Senate that’s designed not to advance change but to slow it.”

We were talking in his hideaway, a windowless room in the Capitol basement, which had a mini-fridge stocked with bottled water, black leatherette furniture circa 1962, and a TV tuned to C-SPAN2 on mute; Senator Kyl’s mouth was moving. Bennet, the former superintendent of schools in Denver, was appointed to a vacant seat in 2009, and already has to defend it this year. He described the Senate with the dry bluntness of an outsider who hasn’t allowed himself to grow too attached. Bennet repeated a story he had heard about a new congressman giving his maiden speech: “And then some more veteran guy came over and said, ‘Son, you’re talking like this place is on the level. It’s not on the level.’ As the fifteen months or so have gone by that I’ve been here, the less on the level it seems.”

On being driven nutty:

I noticed Robert Kaiser, the author of “So Damn Much Money,” in the press gallery. I later asked him if, with the passage of two big reform bills in three months, we were witnessing a possible renewal of the Senate. “If you can engage public opinion in a way politicians can understand, public opinion can still blow away money and interest groups,” he said. “But over the past few decades the reflex has grown in the Senate that, all things considered, it’s better to avoid than to take on big issues. This is the kind of thing that drives Michael Bennet nutty: here you’ve arrived in the United States Senate and you can’t do fuck-all about the destruction of the planet.”

On the single-greatest time-sucking activity engaged in by our senators:

Nothing dominates the life of a senator more than raising money. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, said, “Of any free time you have, I would say fifty per cent, maybe even more,” is spent on fund-raising. In addition to financing their own campaigns, senators participate at least once a week in the Power Hour, during which they make obligatory calls on behalf of the Party (in the Democrats’ case, from a three-story town house across Constitution Avenue from the Senate office buildings, since they’re barred from using their own offices to raise money). Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican, insisted that the donations are never sufficient to actually buy a vote, but he added, “It sucks up time that a senator ought to be spending getting to know other senators, working on issues.”

And, last, former Colorado Senator Gary Hart on Dan Quayle and the great modern decline:

The Senate’s modern decline began in 1978, with the election of a new wave of anti-government conservatives, and accelerated as Republicans became the majority in 1981. “The Quayle generation came in, and there were a number of people just like Dan—same generation, same hair style, same beliefs,” Gary Hart, the Colorado Democrat, recalled. “They were harder-line. They weren’t there to get along with Democrats. But they look accommodationist compared to Republicans in the Senate today.”

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Redford says Ritter is legitimately green and is cutting a path toward lasting prosperity. Hart highlights the growing image Bennet is shaping as a non-politician Jimmy Stewart figure among Washington’s career politicians.

Redford clearly isn’t going to bring over any Tea Partiers to Ritter’s side. His value is in spurring lefties and environmentalists to spend against a Scott McInnis rollback to the 1970s, when a state economy soaked in oil and gas profits looked like it would last a thousand years.

I’m writing to you on behalf of someone I know and admire, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, as he faces a tough re-election campaign against folks who don’t understand that the New Energy Economy is our surest path to long-term growth and prosperity.

Please join me and support one of America’s “Greenest Governors,” Bill Ritter, by contributing to his campaign today.

Bill Ritter is proving that governments can’t just sit idly and wait for the green economy to arrive at their doorsteps. Governments must play an active role, developing the incentives and public-private partnerships clean energy firms need to get off the ground and flourish.

[...]

Building a more sustainable future and curbing climate change can’t happen without leaders like Bill Ritter. And it certainly can’t happen if his opponents, who boast they’d dismantle Colorado’s burgeoning New Energy Economy, start calling the shots.

Writing in support of Bennet, Hart is hammering at the increasing number of nails ringing the Andrew Romanoff candidacy coffin. But who are Hart’s “fellow supporters” willing to double your donations?

My twelve years serving Colorado in the U.S. Senate provides a unique perspective in defining an effective senator. Like most Coloradans, I take very seriously who represents us in Washington, D.C.

I strongly support Senator Michael Bennet. And I feel so strongly about keeping him in the Senate that I’m organizing a group of fellow supporters to match your contributions to his campaign before the end of the year.

Contribute today to Michael’s 2010 campaign, and we’ll pitch in to double it.

The best indicator of an effective Senator isn’t merely a media-created image. It is the actual work they’ve done, and the accomplishments they’ve achieved.

[...]

We are living in an age of ideology and careerism; those who pander to extreme groups or who search for a vague center in order to stay in office for life.

Michael Bennet is neither. He is among the best of true public servants.

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U.S. Sen. Mark Udall is working to end the 16-year-old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy signed into law by Pres. Clinton that requires gay and lesbian servicemen and women to keep their sexuality a secret. Udall sent a letter to Pres. Obama yesterday urging him to repeal the law and “replace it with a policy of nondiscrimination.” Udall posted his letter as a blog at Huffington Post on the same day former Colorado U.S. Sen. Gary hart posted a HuffPo blog analyzing chronic U.S. strategic policy failings.

“With our nation involved in two major wars, we need all qualified men and women – many with mission-critical skills – to be able to serve,” wrote Udall. He included the text of his letter.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Letter to President Obama

Udall’s blog fell somewhere near the middle of the page.

Former Sen. Hart, however, got top billing for a piece he wrote on the ways the country’s domestic and foreign policy are shaped by U.S. cultural resistance to long-term planning.

the United States has generally resisted strategic approaches to domestic matters or grand strategies for its role in the world. Strategy suggests planning, and planning is something centralized governments do.

The price paid for go-it-alone individualism is dependence on reaction. We are stalwart, dedicated, and resolute in reaction to adversity, especially attacks by foreign forces. We are miserable at anticipation and preparation. The latter requires centralized authority, something Americans instinctively resist.

Last month, the senator-turned author and university department chair began blogging his experience as an international observer for the Afghanistan elections at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs website mattersofprinciple.com. As a blogger, Hart has proven to be a craggy skeptical optimist, which makes for good reading.

We [Americans] prefer to wait until something bad happens — Pearl Harbor, economic depression, or 9/11 — and then we unite in response. That is all well and good, except a heavy price in blood and treasure is almost always paid.

There is the alternative of preparing for the future. For example, it was possible to see a new economic wave called information technology by the early and mid-1970s. We could have trained young people and retrained industrial workers for the new jobs this wave would create. But we did not. Some smart people predicted the Wall Street collapse in 2008. Regulatory steps to prevent it were not taken. And, of course, sufficient evidence of a terrorist attack, including evidence involving airplanes and tall buildings, existed in the early 21st century. No serious steps were taken to prevent it.

We had a strategy throughout the second half of the 20th century. It was called “containment of communism.” It required massive coordination of defense, foreign, and even economic policies. And, arguably, it worked, though at a total price some think was excessive. Thereafter, we replaced that strategy with one called “war on terrorism.” As a central organizing principle for the nation, that has worked less well.

We might consider a new grand strategy for the 21st century…

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On election turnout:

The skeptics concluded that the turnout was low, especially in the hostile south and east, too many women stayed away out of fear, and as many as 50 or more were killed on election day. For the smaller group of us who saw the glass half full, however, it was an inspiring experience. Despite ancient cultural and religious traditions of misogyny, a surprising number of candidates of provincial councils were women, and women voted in appreciable numbers in the safer regions. Unlike the only previous national presidential election in 2004, this election was managed by the Afghan government and included an independent election commission. The candidates spoke to issues of great public concern and avoided attacks and acrimony much more, it must be said, than in American elections. No one called any of the candidates “socialists” or “communists.”

Some of the new blog reads like a State of the Union speech Hart never got the chance to deliver. But he seems to know what he wants to do and how the Web works, which means Matters of Principle might be a pretty good blog. His inaugural post was picked up and run as an op-ed by the the Denver Post.

Here’s a taste of the stilted style:

The Founders of the United States not only designed a system of government, they also established principles which bind and guide their successors at home and abroad. To the degree we, their heirs, abide by these national principles we remain true to the vision of the republic they intended us to be and we earn the respect of those around the world who believe us to be a principled nation.

It is worthwhile periodically to remind ourselves what our guiding principles are…

Prof. Hart, will any of this be on the test? He’s better when he mixes in observation:

“We believe that our government is weak, stupid, overbearing, dishonest, and inefficient, and also believe it to be the best in the world and would like to offer it to others.” This insight of Professor Michael Kammen came to mind as I drove around the teeming, dusty streets of Kabul last week.

Here are the rules of the blog, which demonstrate Hart surfs the Web:

It is my hope to keep most of my observations to somewhere between 100 and 300 words, though the philosophical, perhaps ponderous, nature of topics selected will make this difficult. Therefore, responses that begin “I notice you didn’t mention….” will be duly noted but already precluded. Let’s all agree that every comment by me or others will necessarily leave a few things out.

and:

The blog world has become accustomed to the participation of those for whom anonymity provides courage, that is those who find the blog an instrument of vituperation, anger, and bitter ad hominem revenge on the world. No one has yet devised a proper method of shunting anger into a more productive project. For those who are bitter, we must have sympathy but no respect.

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We have lost a great leader and a great man today. Senator Kennedy was not just a colleague but a friend who inspired me, as he inspired so many, to serve this great country, to seek justice, and to care for the least among us. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. He will be sorely missed.

Sen. Mark Udall:

The arc of Ted Kennedy’s life touched every progressive cause for nearly half a century. Whether it was civil rights or health care, eliminating poverty or pollution, Ted brought fire and passion to every cause he championed. What made him an effective Senator and a great leader, however, was his essential pragmatism. At its best, politics is a people business, where bridging differences matters. Ted Kennedy was not just a crusader for great causes, he was also a champion of compromise.

My thoughts and prayers are with Vicki, Senator Kennedy’s children, and his entire family.

Sen. Michael Bennet:

Ted Kennedy leaves a legacy of great accomplishment and extraordinary leadership. He was a dedicated public servant, a master legislator, and above all a fighter for economic and social justice. The Senate will miss the rare combination of idealism and pragmatism he brought to advancing the causes he held dear.

Gov. Bill Ritter:

Today Colorado joins the nation in mourning the loss of Sen. Ted Kennedy, a tireless advocate for those who live on the margins. His unparalleled dedication to improve civil rights, health care and the plight of working families has left an indelible mark on the country and Colorado. As one of America’s most eloquent, determined and intelligent leaders, Sen. Kennedy was an inspiration to public servants everywhere.

I will forever be inspired by the words he spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Colorado on Aug. 25, 2008, exactly one year before his death: “The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives one.”

Former Sen. Gary Hart, who served two terms in the U.S. Senate with Kennedy, from 1975-1987:

I had the great fortune to know Ted Kennedy as a friend and former Senate colleague. He was a voice for justice; he was a crusader for equal rights for all; he was a fighter for the poor and dispossessed; and he now joins his brothers in the best political heaven there can be. I miss his laughter.

Talking Points Memo rounds up more reactions from national and world leaders to Kennedy’s death.

CORRECTION: Ritter’s office sent out a revised statement Wednesday afternoon to correct his original statement, which “contained an incorrect quote from Sen. Kennedy’s speech at last year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver.” Ritter’s reaction has been corrected to reflect his new statement.

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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks to a crowd Monday morning, Sept. 15, 2008 at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds in Golden, Colo. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

In her second solo campaign appearance in the Lower 48, Sarah Palin revved up a crowd at an indoor rodeo in Golden with well-worn excerpts from her acceptance speech and fresh applause lines about the banking crisis that dominated the news Monday morning.

The Republican also announced her “mission” in a McCain administration would include a focus on energy security, government reform and help for families with special needs children, such as her own newborn with Down Syndrome and a nephew with autism.

The Alaska governor spoke for about 20 minutes to a slimmed-down crowd at her second event in Colorado since winning the vice presidential nomination less than two weeks ago. As at all her appearances, Palin arrived with her husband, “First Dude” Todd Palin, relied on a teleprompter and departed before the cheers died down, without taking questions from the crowd or the press.

Later Monday morning, Democrat Barack Obama spoke to an overflowing crowd in Grand Junction on Colorado’s Western Slope before heading to the southern Colorado city of Pueblo.

And — illustrating Jefferson County’s touted role in winning Colorado’s hotly contested nine electoral votes — Obama plans to speak at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden south of Denver on Tuesday, marking perhaps the busiest political days for the city since it was Colorado’s territorial capital in the late 1800s.

Palin blasted managers and regulators for the financial turmoil that engulfed Wall Street institutions over the weekend, as investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and brokerage Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. Insurance giant AIG also sent out tremors Monday as the foreclosure crisis continues to reverberate through the economy.

“This crisis is an issue of real concern, not only for those in our financial markets but everyone across this country,” Palin said. “It’s taking a toll on our economy and that means people’s life savings.”

Echoing her running mate’s call to reform a “patchwork” of financial regulations, Palin sounded a populist note about Wall Street woes. “Guys and gals, our regulatory system is outdated and needs a complete overhaul,” Palin said. “Washington has ignored this. Washington has been asleep at the switch and ineffective, and management on Wall Street has not run these institutions responsibly and has put companies and markets at risk. They place their own interests first instead of their employees and the shareholders who actually own these companies.”

Palin, who has told reporters she earned a ‘D’ in a college macroeconomics course, offered her economic analysis to the crowd: “I’m glad to see that this time the federal reserve and the treasury have said no to using taxpayer money to bail out another one,” referencing last weekend’s multi-billion-dollar federal rescue of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Critics pounced on Palin’s remarks about Fannie and Freddie last weekend when she said the corporations had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers“ at a joint rally with McCain in Colorado Springs on Sept. 6. Neither corporation cost taxpayers a dime, economists noted, and wouldn’t until after their takeover, which was accomplished the next day.

However, complaining about corporations running amok is beginning to prove embarrassing to the McCain-Palin ticket.

Two of the campaign’s advisers on economic policy are lobbyists for the embattled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a CNN campaign ad fact check segment. Talking Points Memo reported last week that another McCain finance adviser is connected to the Interior Dept. sex and drug scandal and no bid contracts involving Denver-area Minerals Management Service staff and oil companies.

But the scandals don’t end there — as Palin’s thoroughly debunked stump speech talking point about one of the most infamous examples of wasteful federal spending in recent memory.

Palin repeated her widely discredited claim that she had a hand in rejecting federal funds for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” an infamous congressional earmark Palin supported for years before giving up long after the earmark disappeared.

“On that bridge to nowhere,” Palin said Monday, “I did tell Congress ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ If we wanted a bridge up there, we were going to build it ourselves.” The crowd, riled up by Palin’s numerous references to “reform,” “change” and the Republican ticket’s “maverick” status, cheered loudly.

A view of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory from the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

In a conference call after Palin’s speech, former presidential hopeful Gary Hart scoffed at Republican efforts to don the mantle of alternative and renewable energy. “It hasn’t been at the forefront of any Republican energy plan for the last 25 years,” Hart said, noting that he pushed for the creation of NREL’s forerunner, the Solar Energy Research Institute, in Golden soon after his election to the Senate in the mid 1970s.

“As someone who’s been advocating this for 30 years, I say welcome to the club, but they (Republicans) haven’t done any pioneering work” in renewable energy, Hart said. “It’s fine for George Bush to say we’re addicted to oil, but people shouldn’t get credit for jumping on a train after it’s left the station.”

Palin’s own record on renewable energy is mixed, according to the Huffington Post’s Kate Sheppard. Palin vetoed a pioneering wind farm before later supporting it, and this year vetoed hundreds of millions in renewable energy funding for Alaska. Other renewable projects in the state are “stalled due to lack of funding, but Palin approved $2 million for a conference aimed at proving global warming doesn’t threaten polar bears.

The event was announced Friday afternoon as a pancake breakfast for 1,000, but the Colorado McCain campaign changed plans after supporters showed up in droves to claim tickets. After announcing 5,000 could instead attend a speech at the fairgrounds, all tickets were distributed within hours, the McCain campaign said.

Demonstrators, including the Mamas for Obama group, wave signs and try to engage the crowd as it enters to hear Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speak. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

Another group of anti-Palin demonstrators crowded the entrance to the arena, waving “Obama Mamas” and “You’re No Hillary” signs. Michelle Wolf, who organized a group of dozens of protesters, said many of the Palin supporters remarked the protesters were better looking than they expected, but only one harassed them, grabbing a sign and throwing it to the ground.

A Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy estimated the crowd at 2,500. “It’s not as big as they expected,” he said. Roughly half the Westernaire’s Arena — a hangar-like structure with a dirt floor and grandstand seating for roughly 800 — was empty. Still, the crowd packed in front of the stage and filling the bleachers was boisterous and vocal, leading many of the toddlers in attendance to cover their ears and howl at the noise.

The crowd included numerous veterans, some wearing T-shirts announcing their status and others in VFW vests festooned with pins. Palin drew her loudest cheer near the end of her address when she urged veterans and members of the Armed Services to raise their hands “so we can acknowledge you and thank you.”

Aside from a handful of minorities, virtually every member of the audience was white, similar to the Republican National Convention, which counted the lowest percentage of minority delegates since anyone began keeping track.

Palin’s speech was drowned out several times when a group of spectators attempted to shout down a few Obama demonstrators whenever they heckled the governor. Chants of “USA! USA! USA!” rose from the back of the crowd after someone yelled, “You’re not qualified!” A handful of spectators waved Obama signs, but the vast majority waved printed and hand-made Palin or McCain signs.

After reminding the crowd she gave birth in April to Trig, her Down Syndrome son, Palin called for increased funding for the National Institutes of Health and said she doesn’t want government to “get in the way” of medical breakthroughs. Palin has said she opposes embryonic stem-cell research. On Monday the The Boston Globe reported the Republican platform supported by McCain and Palin slams the door on certain kinds of stem-cell research, including promising recent discoveries that could benefit children with Down Syndrome.

Palin delivered a similar solo speech in Carson City, Nevada, on Saturday. After the rally in Golden, Palin was headed for a fundraiser in Ohio and then planned to rejoin John McCain on the campaign trail.