As the 2012 presidential campaign starts a Barack Obama report card

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As the 2012 presidential campaign starts a Barack Obama report card. As President Obama begins his reelection campaign, he faces an array of obstacles. The unifying theme that helped him win the 2008 election is a faint memory. Even if the economy grows briskly over the next 18 months, the unemployment rate is likely to remain above 8 percent on Election Day.

Consider this a preliminary report card regarding some of the president's challenges.

Political Identity: C. Who is this guy, and where does he want to take the country? Obama's hope-and-change platform in 2008 allowed people to fill in whatever details they wanted. This strategy served a little-known candidate, but it's untenable for an incumbent. Americans know that Obama has a vision 70 percent do, according to an April 9-10 CNN/Opinion Research poll of 824 adults.

But there are several obstacles for Obama. One is the bizarre birther phenomenon, which cuts both ways: It paints Republicans as crazy to independent voters; but it also provides an avenue for some voters to express views that might otherwise be taboo to discuss, perhaps about his race or his religion.

Separate from the birther constellation is a cluster of beliefs with fairly high magnitude. Obama's style is conciliatory and concessional. Even liberals don't seem to know precisely where Obama wants to lead them. It's not a question of goals; it's a question of guts. Where will he fight? Perhaps his new deficit-cutting plan will show the way. This grade, incidentally, is given without reference to his potential opponents. Throw a Republican with an identity crisis into this mix and Obama's grade rises.

Campaign Team: A. Obama's reelection team is experienced, trusted, and not riven by the usual infighting that besets campaigns. It's true that they're cocky, but after any number of near-death experiences with health care and other issues, their hubris is a bit more muted. It must here be noted that several potential GOP opponents notably Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney are putting together A list campaign teams too.

Leadership: C. Americans are not sure about Obama's leadership skills. A small majority see him as a leader, a number that has been in steady decline since he was elected, according to a Gallup poll of 1027 adults that was conducted March 25-27. Fewer than half think he can manage the government (see CNN/OPR poll).

One version of the case posits that Obama has spent way too much time blaming predecessors even as he continued Bush policies, from TARP to Guantanamo Bay. His leadership skills tie into his political identity. He seems rudderless at times. His advisers will say that Obama wants to fix problems and is a pragmatist, and that external events have made it all but impossible to chart a straight course and follow it. That may be true, but the challenge is to convince the American people that this style of governing is the right one.

(Meet Obama's new climate chief)

Attributes and Values: A. Americans like Obama; they trust that he wants the best for them even if they don't quite know what that is; they see him as honest, on their side, and likable (see Gallup). This will be a significant asset. It helped carry President Bush to reelection in 2004.

Organization: A. Regardless of whether there's a drop-off in volunteer intensity early on, there's no question that Obama's reelection operation will be formidable and well-funded enough to compete with whatever Republicans are able to construct. This includes outside groups who will try to chip away at Obama in battleground states. Democrats will have well-financed vehicles of their own.

Position Relative to His Opposition: B. The Republican field is unleavened at best. The all-but-declared Republican candidates (Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty) all have significant, if resolvable, flaws. Some of those thought to be considering the race from Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Donald Trump threaten to pull the GOP off its rails. Dark-horse challenges could make the field rougher, especially Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana.

(Is Donald Trump late-night TV's new punching bag?)

Domestic Issues: C. The House Republican embrace of transforming Medicare under the plan put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is a godsend to the Obama team. Social issues don't seem to matter, as Obama himself noted on Thursday night. But Obama still faces formidable challenges. The economy, while moving in the right direction, is still sputtering. And one shouldn't underestimate the GOP's ability to portray Obama as a tax-raiser even if he is only proposing to restore higher income tax rates on wealthier earners. Keep an eye on the housing market and on gas prices as well as on personal income growth per capita a favorite statistic used by the Bushies to determine economic satisfaction. Obama is performing at roughly the Bill Clinton level in the comparable time period on questions about which political agent Americans trust more to handle domestic problems. (See CNN/USA Today/Gallup Trends data.)

(Where do the GOP 2012 hopefuls stand on the environment?)

Foreign issues: B. He continues the Bush war in Afghanistan and drew down the one in Iraq while joining one against Libya. There's no crowning achievement like a Middle East peace deal. Guantanamo Bay remains open. Independents liked Obama because he promised to repair America's relationship with the world and raise its standing. He has done that. He will remind independents of this. It will probably work. Obama's proposed defense cuts are going to be troubling to voters in the industrial Midwest and the Intermountain West.

Relations With Party Base: B. This is a hard one to grade. There are several different Democratic bases and they don't seem to overlap. The progressive elites, those who follow politics around the clock and have venues to broadcast their views, think Obama has abandoned core Democratic principles. Rank-and-file Democrats seem to be modestly influenced by these complaints. Republican elites have more influence over their base than Democratic elites, for a variety of reasons.

Among Democrats, Obama's job approval is about 5 percentage points away from where he needs to be. Three-fourths of self-identified liberals approve of Obama's performance to date. He needs these numbers to be higher. Liberal white Democrats and African-Americans are solid Obama supporters. But Obama's approval rating has dropped significantly among Latino voters (73 percent when he was elected; 54 percent now, according to Gallup), and slightly among younger voters (ages 18 to 29) who were hardest hit by the economic sluggishness. While 55 percent among this group is stronger than it was half a year ago, according to a huge Institute of Politics poll released last week, it needs to be higher. Still, in the absence of a Republican foil, these are generally sufficient numbers for the president. At this point in 1995, more than 4 in 10 Democrats wanted a primary challenger for Bill Clinton; fewer than 2 in 10 do for Obama.

On Obama healthcare case Supreme Court takes no action

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On Obama healthcare case Supreme Court takes no action. The Supreme Court took no action Monday on a request to speed up a ruling on President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul law, his signature domestic accomplishment that has provoked a fierce political battle.

The justices were scheduled on Friday to consider the state of Virginia's appeal seeking to invoke a rarely used procedure to bypass the normal appeals process and speed up a Supreme Court ruling on the law's constitutionality.

Legal and financial analysts expected the justices to reject the request.

In orders released on Monday, the Supreme Court took no action in the case. The court did not grant Virginia's request, nor did it deny it, as the Obama administration has urged.

The justices often take no action in a high-profile case when they want more time to consider it. The justices could consider the healthcare law again at a private conference on April 23.
[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]

Several federal trial judges around the nation have upheld the law but others declared it unconstitutional on the grounds Congress overstepped its authority in requiring that Americans start buying health insurance in 2014 or pay a penalty.

He much richer than Mitt Romney Donald Trump says

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He much richer than Mitt Romney Donald Trump says. Donald Trump has been capturing significant attention for slamming the president. It seems now he's broadening his reach, turning his offensive game toward his potential GOP challengers.

This weekend, the real estate mogul began pitting his riches and business acumen against those of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. (Though Trump's net worth continues to be the source of much mystery and speculation.)

In an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley Sunday, Trump called the former presidential candidate a "small businessman" though Romney built Bain Capital into one of the largest private equity firms in the world. He also suggested Romney didn't create companies (even though he did).

"I'm a much bigger businessman and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney," Trump said. He later added: "I built a very big net worth and I'd like to put that ability … to work for this country. So I don't do it for myself. I'd be doing it for this country.

Japan reactors too high for workers Radiation near

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Japan reactors too high for workers Radiation near. A pair of thin robots on treads sent to explore buildings inside Japan's crippled nuclear reactor came back Monday with disheartening news: Radiation levels are far too high for repair crews to go inside.

Nevertheless, officials remained hopeful they can stick to their freshly minted "roadmap" for cleaning up the radiation leak and stabilizing the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant by year's end so they can begin returning tens of thousands of evacuees to their homes.

"Even I had expected high radioactivity in those areas. I'm sure (plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.) and other experts have factored in those figures when they compiled the roadmap," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

Officials said Monday that radiation had spiked in a water tank in Unit 2 and contaminated water was discovered in other areas of the plant. They also described in detail for the first time the damage to fuel in three troubled reactors, saying pellets had melted.

That damage — sometimes referred to as a partial meltdown — had already been widely assumed, but the confirmation, along with the continued release of radiation from other areas, serves to underscore how difficult and how long the cleanup process will be. In fact, government officials themselves have acknowledged that there are still many setbacks that could crop up to slow down their timeline.

Angry at the slow response to the nuclear crisis and to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that caused it, lawmakers tore into Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

"You should be bowing your head in apology. You clearly have no leadership at all," Masashi Waki, a lawmaker from the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, shouted at Kan.

"I am sincerely apologizing for what has happened," Kan said, stressing the government was doing all it could to handle the unprecedented disasters.

TEPCO's president, Masataka Shimizu, appeared ill at ease as lawmakers heckled and taunted him.

Workers have not been able to enter the reactor buildings at the stricken plant since the first days after the cooling systems were wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 27,000 people dead or missing. Hydrogen explosions in both buildings in the first few days destroyed their roofs and scattered radioactive debris.

On Sunday, a plant worker opened an outer door to one of the buildings and two Packbots, which resemble drafting lamps on tank-like treads, entered. After the worker closed the door, one robot opened an inner door and both rolled inside to take readings for temperature, pressure and radioactivity. They later entered a second building.

The robots reported radioactivity readings of up to 49 millisieverts per hour inside Unit 1 and up to 57 inside Unit 3, levels too high for workers to realistically enter.

"It's a harsh environment for humans to work inside," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Japanese authorities more than doubled the legal limit for nuclear workers since the crisis began to 250 millisieverts a year. Workers in the U.S. nuclear industry are allowed an upper limit of 50 millisieverts per year. Doctors say radiation sickness sets in at 1,000 millisieverts and includes nausea and vomiting.

The robots, made by Bedford, Massachusetts, company iRobot, which also makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner, explored Unit 2 on Monday, but TEPCO officials had yet to analyze that data.

The radioactivity must be reduced, possibly with the removal of contaminated debris and stagnant water, before repair crews would be allowed inside, said NISA official Masataka Yoshizawa.

Sturdier robots can remove some of the debris, but workers are needed to test the integrity of the equipment and carry out electrical repairs needed to restore the cooling systems as called for in the road map, Yoshizawa said.

"What robots can do is limited, so eventually, people must enter the buildings," TEPCO official Takeshi Makigami said.

The robots, along with remote-controlled miniature drones, have enabled TEPCO to photograph and take measurements of conditions in and around the plant while minimizing workers' exposure to radiation and other hazards.

Separately, readings from a water tank attached to the spent fuel pool in Unit 2 showed a severe spike in radiation that NISA officials said might have been caused by the escape of radioactive vapor from a nearby containment vessel. They said, however, the possibility of damage to spent fuel rods could not be ruled out.

NISA also sent a report to the government watchdog Nuclear Safety Commission, saying that some fuel pellets and rods in the reactors in Units 1, 2 and 3 had become overheated and melted, the first time it had provided details of the damage to the fuel. Nishiyama said the agency can only say "more than 3 percent" of the fuel rods have melted. That figure had previously been given as the minimum core damage suspected.

A pool of stagnant radioactive water was also discovered in the basement of Unit 4.

With evacuees' ordeal stretching into the long-term, some began moving out of school gymnasiums into temporary housing. Hundreds who have not found apartments or relatives to take them in began filling up inns at hot springs.

"The government has asked us to be ready to take in as many as 200 evacuees for the next four months at least," said Masaki Hata, whose family has run the Yoshikawaya Hot Springs Inn on the outskirts of Fukushima for seven generations.

Twisters pound South At least 44 dead

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Twisters pound South At least 44 dead. Lowe's store manager Michael Hollowell had heard the tornado warnings but his first clue that the danger was outside his front door came when he saw his staff running toward the back of the home improvement store.

More than 100 employees and customers screamed in near unison when the steel roof curled off overhead Saturday. The store was becoming part of the wreckage left by a ferocious storm system bristling with killer twisters that ripped through the South.

"You could hear all the steel ripping. People screaming in fear for their lives," Hollowell told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Those in the store did not become part of the death toll that totaled at least 44 across six states, and officials said quick action by Hollowell and his employees helped them all make it out alive in Sanford, about 40 miles south of Raleigh.

In all of Lee County, where Sanford is located, officials said there was just one confirmed fatality during the storm, which claimed at least 21 lives statewide, damaged hundreds of homes and left a swath of destruction unmatched by any spring storm since the mid-1980s.

In Raleigh early Monday, authorities were blocking access to a mobile home park of about 200 homes where three children were killed. Officials planned to assess conditions after sunrise before deciding whether to allow residents to return home.

Power lines and trees still covered nearby roads. Where roads were clear, there were massive piles of debris that had been pushed to the side of the street.

Gov. Beverly Perdue said Monday morning on NBC's "Today" show that she'd never seen anything like the devastation, saying it appeared that homes had been handled like paper doll houses. Search-and-rescue teams were still operating all over the eastern part of the state, and federal officials were beginning their damage assessments, she said.

"The good news is that the tornados have left and things are brighter today in North Carolina," Perdue said.

The violent weather began Thursday in Oklahoma, where two people died, before cutting across the Deep South on Friday and hitting North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday. Authorities said seven people died in Arkansas; seven in Alabama; six in Virginia; and one in Mississippi. North Carolina's state emergency management agency said it had reports of 23 fatalities from Saturday's storms, but local officials confirmed only 21 deaths to The Associated Press.

An apparent tornado passed near a Virginia nuclear power plant, knocking down power lines. Dominion Virginia Power said backup sources including diesel generators kept electricity going to maintain both units at its Surry Power Station. The tornado didn't hit the two nuclear units, which are designed to withstand weather, earthquakes and hurricanes, the company said.

More than 240 tornadoes were reported from the storm system, including 62 in North Carolina, but the National Weather Service's final numbers could be lower because some tornadoes may have been reported more than once.

Meanwhile, survivors recalled miraculous escapes.

In the Bladen County community of Ammon, about 70 miles south of Raleigh, Audrey McKoy and her husband Milton saw a tornado bearing down on them over the tops of the pine trees that surround the seven or eight mobile homes that make up their neighborhood. He glanced at a nearby farm and saw the winds lifting pigs and other animals in the sky.

"It looked just like 'The Wizard of Oz,'" Audrey said.

They took shelter in their laundry room, and after emerging once the storm had passed, were disoriented for a moment. The twister had turned their mobile home around and they were standing in their backyard.

Milton found three bodies in their neighborhood, including 92-year-old Marchester Avery and his 50-year-old son, Tony, who died in adjacent mobile homes. He stopped his wife from coming over to see.

"You don't want to look at this," he told her.

The storms crushed trailer parks and brought life in the center of the state's second-largest city to a virtual standstill. It was the worst outbreak in the state since 22 twisters in 1984 killed 42 people.

Perdue planned to tour hard-hit areas in three counties Monday. The devastation she saw Sunday left her near tears, she said. The storm pummeled bustling cities and remote rural communities. One of Perdue's stops was downtown Raleigh, where fallen trees blocked major thoroughfares and damage to the Shaw University campus forced it to cancel the remainder of its spring semester.

Perdue said she'd been in contact with President Barack Obama, who pledged his support, and that federal emergency management workers were already on the ground.

"We have in North Carolina a tremendous relationship with our federal partners, and have been through this so many times," she said. "That's not a good thing. That's a bad thing."

One place Perdue was scheduled to visit was Bertie County, where storms were deadliest. At least 11 residents died, Bertie County Manager Zee Lamb said, including three members of the same family.

Jean Burkett lived near Roy and Barbara Lafferty and Barbara's mother, Helen White, in Colerain. Burkett and Barbara Lafferty graduated from high school together in 1964 and had always been neighbors. On Sunday, at her relatively untouched home, Burkett pointed out a row of four or five about 400 yards away that had been demolished. The Laffertys and Helen White died in their home.

"The neighborhood has lost some mighty fine neighbors," Burkett said. "It's the worst thing we've ever seen."

The conditions that allowed for the storm occur on the Great Plains maybe twice a year, but they almost never happen in North Carolina, according to Scott Sharp, a weather service meteorologist in Raleigh.

The atmosphere was unstable Saturday, which allows air to rise and fall quickly, creating winds of hurricane strength or greater. There was also plenty of moisture in the air, which fuels violent storms. Shear winds at different heights, moving in different directions, created the spin needed to create tornadoes, Sharp said.

Many of the deaths across the state occurred in mobile homes like the ones in Ammon. The three deaths in Raleigh were in a mobile home park about five miles north of downtown, which was still closed off to residents early Monday.

Census data from 2007, the latest available, estimates 14.5 percent of residences in North Carolina are mobile homes, the seventh highest percentage in the nation and well over the U.S. average of 6.7 percent.

North Carolina officials tallied more than 130 serious injuries, 65 homes destroyed and another 600 significantly damaged by Sunday evening, according to state public safety spokeswoman Julia Jarema. Officials expect those totals to climb as damage assessments continue.

Back at the Lowe's store, Joseph Rosser and his 13-year-old daughter, Hannah, had pulled their Chevrolet Colorado pickup off the road Saturday, seeking shelter. Instead, the store's exterior concrete toppled, crushing the truck's cab with both inside.

"I really didn't see much because I had a pillow over my face to protect my head and I heard my dad tell me it was going to be OK," Hannah said. "And then all of a sudden, I just heard a loud boom.

"My dad was lying there, telling me he was going to die," said Hannah, her midsection wrapped in a back brace. "He sounded very hoarse like he couldn't breathe. He was crying and was hurt really bad."

She crawled out the truck's shattered back window and ran around the parking lot calling for help, because her cell phone wouldn't work. Both Rossers are recovering from their injuries.

While the death toll may climb and while it will be weeks before final damage assessments are completed, residents and officials alike are looking to make repairs and start building what was lost.

Aleta Tootle and four other people sheltered in a closet in her Bertie County home, emerging with only a few scratches after the rest of the building was ripped to shreds. Surveying the wreckage Sunday, she said there was only one thing left to do.