White House Cheat Sheet: Obama's Swing State Road Show

The Fix
by Chris Cillizza
Washington Post

When President Obama commemorates his 100th day in office next Wednesday with a townhall meeting in St. Louis, Mo., it will mark the eleventh state he has visited during the early months of his presidency -- nearly every one of which is expected to be hotly contested in his 2012 reelection race.

In a little more than three months in office, Obama will have visited Arizona (Phoenix), California (Costa Mesa/Los Angeles), Colorado (Denver), Florida (Fort Myers), Illinois (Springfield/Peoria), Indiana (Elkhart), Iowa (Newton), Missouri (St. Louis), North Carolina (Camp Lejeune), Ohio (Columbus), and Virginia (Langley/Springfield/Willamsburg/Fairfax).

Of those eleven, nine were decided by nine points or less in the 2008 election -- the only exceptions being California and Obama's home state of Illinois -- and five were decided by four points or less. (Also worth noting: all of those nine states were carried by George W. Bush in 2004; seven of the nine flipped to Obama four years later.)

No state was closer than Missouri where Obama lost to Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) by approximately 4,500 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast.

Is it then mere coincidence that Obama is choosing to commemorate his first 100 days as president with a stop in Missouri? White House aides insist that is the case but the Fix has followed politics long enough to know that coincidences like that don't just happen.

The most precious commodity in a campaign or in the White House is the time of the candidate/president so it's nearly impossible to think that Obama's domestic travel schedule has not been chosen with an eye toward 2012 and the states he will need to secure for reelection.

This is nothing new in politics: every first term president spends his first four years positioning himself to win a second four years.

Nor does Obama's swing state tour mean that the sole driving force behind his travel schedule is the 2012 election.

But, what his domestic travel schedule does serve to remind us is that Obama and his inner circle are not simply idealists operating in a world without politics. He and they also carry a strong pragmatic streak -- his decisions to reject public financing during the campaign and to oppose the creation of a 9/11-like commission to look into the harsh interrogations used under the Bush administration yesterday are just two examples -- and understand that without winning in the political arena, victory is not possible on the policy front. Sphere: Related Content