Last week, I wrote about the standings in the presidential race and said it looked like a long, hard slog through about a dozen clearly identified target states, much like the contests in 2000 and 2004. Call it the 2000/2004 long, hard slog scenario.

"The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states ... "
-- Barack Obama, rising star, Democratic convention, 2004.

President Barack Obama's 17-minute video, "The Road We've Traveled," gives us an idea of how he wants to frame the issues in the fall election.

DALLAS -- For a conservative Texan seeking national office, it could hardly get better than this:

WASHINGTON -- Republicans supposedly revere the Constitution, but in its birthplace, Pennsylvania, they are contemplating a subversion of the Framers' institutional architecture.

The political beliefs of Barack Obama, said Rick Santorum last week, come out of "some phony theology. ... Not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology."

Let me first always remind readers that polls are a snapshot in time. Two years from now, President Obama could be sitting on top of the world politically. But for now, he has lost all but 38 percent approval from the critical "independent" American voters. They're the ones that gave him the presidency. He appears headstrong in his determination to show the nation what a disastrous presidency looks like.

WASHINGTON -- The legacy of 9/11 can't be fully measured even now, but perhaps the most damaging aspect can be found in our national discourse.

Exit Newt Gingrich. Well, not quite yet, officially. On his Facebook page, Gingrich says he will endure "the rigors of campaigning for public office" and "will carry the message of American renewal to every part of this great land, whatever it takes."

Pundits lately have been comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, suggesting he is a likely loser in 2012.

Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.