Obama to Meet Minnesota Woman and 'Spend a Day in Her Shoes'

During his upcoming trip to Minnesota, President Obama has scheduled a day with a woman who wrote him a letter about the economic challenges she faces each day. When he meets her this week, the White House says he plans to “spend a day in her shoes” to learn of her struggles.

The White House reports that President Obama reads 10 letters a day from regular Americans and one of those letters he read recently was from a Minnesota woman named Rebekah.

In a video posted to Youtube on June 23, the President read an except from Rebekah’s letter.

“I know that staying silent about what you see and what needs changing never makes any difference,” Obama said, reading from the letter. “So I’m writing you to let you know what it’s like for us out here in the middle of the country, and I hope you will listen.”

In answer to Rebekah, Obama went on to say, “I think it’s going to be wonderful for me to let Rebekah know not only am I listening, but that she’s not alone out there.”

In the video the White House announced that Obama will indulge a new campaign of meeting and talking with Americans who have written him letters and this appearance in Minnesota will be the first stop in that effort.

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said in the video:

The President’s trip to Minnesota to meet Rebekah is going to be part of a series of days in the life that we’re going to do where the President’s going to visit a community, spend a whole day there, talk to small business owners, families, workers, get a real sense of what’s happening in America and have a real discussion with them about how we’re going to move this country forward.

The President concluded the video saying, “There are actually policies out there that could end up making a difference in her life if we could get Washington to work on her behalf.”

The meeting of Rebekah, though, isn’t all Obama plans to do in Minnesota. For months already Obama had been planning to attend a “private fundraiser” on Thursday night.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com