In something of a blitz before taking off on a family vacation, President Obama heads west on Friday, seeking to drill up support for the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.

At events Friday in Belgrade, Montana, and Saturday in Grand Junction, Colorado, Obama will push health care reform.

"We'll do some events not yet announced over the course of the next few days after that," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday.

And even as Obama and his family visit national parks for vacation next week, there will "continue to be calls with different lawmakers about plans for what happens when we come back in the fall and continuing to make progress," Gibbs said.

One lawmaker in Montana is a particularly important ally for Obama. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, has been heading negotiations among members of his panel for a bipartisan health care proposal.

For Obama, the trip is a new twist on the classic 19th-century expression "Go west, young man."

Though the president has said consensus can be reached on health care reform, the contentious town hall meetings held by lawmakers across the country have created a different impression.

The White House, and many Democrats in Congress, hope that by building support in the West, the president can start to turn the tide. Though the region is largely Republican, Obama made some inroads in the latest election. He won in Colorado and lost by just a slim margin in Montana.

Protests by those opposing the president's health care plan are scheduled in Belgrade and Grand Junction. They could eat into the president's effort and at the least will show how elusive true consensus may be.


It also remains to be seen whether the tenor of these town hall events will resemble the largely courteous one the president had Tuesday in New Hampshire or erupt into the kind of bickering seen at some events held by lawmakers.

But the president's town hall events are just part of a larger Democratic strategy for winning support in the region.

The Democratic National Committee began a TV ad this week promoting the president's health care plan. A committee spokesman said the ad will run on national cable as well as on local cable in New Hampshire, Montana, Colorado and the District of Columbia.

The group Families USA, which supports the president's plan, also launched a campaign Thursday that includes an ad running in a dozen states, among them Montana and Colorado.

But groups opposed to the president's plan have their own campaigns.

One voter in Livingston, near Bozeman and not far from Belgrade, summarized the kinds of concerns that she and many others in the region have.

"I believe that there is a health care crisis; I really do," Sonja McDonald, who voted for Obama in 2008, told CNN's Ed Henry on Thursday. "Do I believe that the government needs to be more involved? No!"

Henry met McDonald at a clinic that gets half its funding from taxpayers.

"The government being involved is fine," McDonald said. "It's just ... when they try and overstep, when they try to say, 'No, this is what needs to be done.' "