PEOSTA, Iowa – The president was in "Afternoon of a Faun" mode, a rural deity playing on his panpipes in the woods. Then, suddenly, he stood very still as he sensed electoral danger.

After assuring Barack Obama that she was a supporter, an Iowa mother named Emily asked the president at a town hall at the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah what had gone wrong.

Standing in a setting that was Martha Stewart-perfect – red barn with an American flag, surrounded by white pines, red cedars and pink zinnias – the president looked breezy in khakis and white shirt. But he seemed to tense up as Emily spoke.

"So when you ran for office you built a tremendous amount of trust with the American people, that you seemed like someone who wouldn't move the bar on us," Emily said. "And it seems, especially in the last year, as if your negotiating tactics have sort of cut away at that trust by compromising some key principles that we believed in, like repealing the tax cut, not fighting harder for single-payer. Even Social Security and Medicare seemed on the line when we were dealing with the debt ceiling. So I'm just curious, moving forward, what prevents you from taking a harder negotiating stance, being that it seems that the Republicans are taking a really hard stance?"

The president defended himself with a tinge of resignation: If the crazed bullies put a gun to your head, you must surrender.

"Now, I know that people would like to say, 'Well, just do something to get these guys under control,' " he told Emily, adding: "You don't want to reward unreasonableness. Look, I get that. But sometimes you've got to make choices in order to do what's best for the country at that particular moment."

The answer must have seemed lame even to Obama because, on the spur of the moment, he felt backed into doing what many in his White House and party wish he had done long ago. He told Emily he would put forward "a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs and to control our deficit." (But not until September.)

Driving through Midwest cornfields in his opaque, black, custom-made, $1.1 million "Matrix" bus, our opaque president found himself in The Field of Dashed Dreams. If you don't build it, they may not come. Dubuque's Telegraph Herald published a front-page editorial, suggesting to the president that he could have skipped the campaign-style trip and "sent the savings to Dubuque County and Northwest Illinois, which were inundated by flash floods less than three weeks ago" but didn't get federal assistance.

Obama spent Tuesday here in Peosta squirreled away in rural economic forums; he said afterward that they talked about such things as cows grazing next to solar panels and "helping farms manage manure in creative ways." The president made his sobering case that America is still great while Gov. Rick Perry barreled past on his own bus, breaking creative new ground in volatility.

As Obama did dressage, Perry galloped through Iowa like an unbroken stallion in danger of cracking a leg. The Texas governor called the president "the greatest threat to our country" and questioned his patriotism and sense of duty. The former Air Force pilot said the military and veterans would prefer a commander in chief who had been in uniform.

Perry said Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, would commit a "treasonous" act if he "prints more money" and threatened Lee Marvin justice. "We would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas."

Why do conservatives always have to call people traitors? Why can't they just say, "You're mistaken"?

By the end of the day, it was a barroom brawl, with Karl Rove telling Fox News that it was not "presidential" to call the Fed chief, appointed by the second President Bush, a traitor. (When Team W. calls you a yahoo, you're in trouble.)

Obama batted away the Texan, as did Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, who told me: "We may disagree with our political opponents, but we certainly think they're all patriots – even those who wanted to secede from the union."

While Perry was playing the retro trigger-happy cowboy, Obama was playing the retro henpecked husband. In Cannon Falls, Minn., the president compared negotiating with House Republicans to negotiating with his wife.

"In my house," Obama noted, "if I said, 'You, know, Michelle, honey, we got to cut back, so we're going to have you stop shopping completely. You can't buy shoes; you can't buy dresses; but I'm keeping my golf clubs.' You know, that wouldn't go over so well."

In Decorah, he said: "Everybody cannot get 100 percent of what they want. Now, for those of you who are married, there is an analogy here. I basically let Michelle have 90 percent of what she wants. But, at a certain point, I have to draw the line and say, 'Give me my little 10 percent.' "

Maybe Michelle should be the one negotiating with the Republicans.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Maureen Dowd writes for the NewYork Times.

• Read more articles by Maureen Dowd