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Next week in the important political stomping grounds of wide-open Iowa, two prominent presidential candidates will be just 24 hours and 145 miles apart.

In Waterloo on June 27, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., will officially launch her race for the White House, continuing a critique of President Obama's leadership that the tea party favorite has been making for months. On the following day, a quick two-hour drive down the road, Obama will be paying a visit to a Davenport Alcoa plant while defending his record and celebrating U.S. manufacturing.

Coincidence? In a political season in which the man who has the Oval Office job exploits openings to display his bona fides against those of the serious and not-so-serious potential GOP rivals, the White House relishes those optics. Media coverage in the Hawkeye State on Thursday instantly muted the Bachmann-in-Iowa headlines when the president's planned tour of the Alcoa facility was announced by the White House and the aluminum producer.

"It is a true honor that President Obama has chosen to visit Alcoa in Davenport, a great example of the high technical capabilities and innovation that makes U.S. manufacturing strong," Alcoa Chairman and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld said in a company press release.

Alcoa, a big exporter, shed Iowa jobs during the recession but has been hiring again. The Davenport plant employs 2,000 workers in a unionized manufacturing plant that builds products for aerospace, industrial uses, defense and the automotive industries.

"We have more jobs in Davenport today than before the crisis as we capture growing global demand for innovative products. We welcome the opportunity to share with the president our American manufacturing success story," Kleinfeld said.

The White House described the Iowa trip as part of the "Winning the Future" tour of companies and manufacturing plants Obama has been making for months. To spotlight a fragile but expanding economy and job creation around the country, the president regularly pays visits to U.S. manufacturers and energy-efficient companies that are adding workers, competing with producers abroad, and leading America along new avenues of innovation. Many of the locations chosen for Obama tours are in battleground states the president hopes to win in 2012.

Obama won Iowa in 2008 by 54 percent to John McCain's 45 percent.

In May, Michelle Obama made her first visit to the state since the 2008 election to deliver a commencement address at the University of Northern Iowa at Cedar Falls.