Miller told the president that he would not be getting many votes from steelworkers. Miller, a Bush supporter, drove home his point by describing the grief he caught from co-workers when he wore a "Steelworkers for Bush" T-shirt to the plant.
"You're a brave soul," Bush replied, touching off a round of laughter.
At the end of the meeting, Bush turned to his reelection prospects. Although he expressed his belief that he would win on Nov. 2, Bush said he would be at peace with himself "if people elect to send me home."
"He said he wanted to be remembered as being effective and he was not worried about trying to be popular," said Chancelor Wyatt, a marketing manager at Timken.
John Grogg, a furnace operator who put on the dress blues of his Pennsylvania Air National Guard unit for the occasion, quoted the president as saying: "You know, if I should lose this reelection for president of the United States, I know that I've done as good a job as I can do. And God would say, 'Good servant, take a break.' "
The give-and-take on the bus stood in sharp contrast to standard Bush campaign events, where staffers and volunteers carefully screened attendants -- and recently evicted a woman and her family members from a Michigan rally because one wore an abortion rights T-shirt.
At one point during the Ohio session, Bush lauded the sacrifices of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. "There were tears in just about everybody's eyes," recalled Martino.
At another point, Bush turned to Grogg, the Air National Guardsman, and asked, "Sergeant, have you been to Iraq yet?"
"Not yet, sir," Grogg replied.
"Do you want to go?" Bush asked.
"In a heartbeat," the reservist said.
"God bless you, son," the president told him.
"I'm only four years younger," Grogg said later. "But I kind of liked that, him calling me 'son.' "
As they parted company, the men exchanged salutes.
The idea for the meeting came from the Bush campaign, and Timken's senior human resources officials assembled the group -- a cross-section of the company, a spokesman said. Neither the campaign nor the company issued the seven men and three women any do's or don'ts, according to Martino and Jason Saragian, a Timken spokesman.
Bush is likely to continue meeting with voters, advisors said. Indeed, he held a similar session, lasting about 40 minutes, with 19 employees of Boeing Commercial Airplanes during a visit to the Seattle area late last week.
The tenor of that meeting was more upbeat, perhaps because Boeing -- rebounding from a slump in aircraft sales -- recently announced plans to hire 3,000 more workers by year's end.
