Barack Obama 2012 Campaign Launch Video - "It Begins With Us"

Premier clip de la campagne 2012. Lien pour le site de la campagne: http://www.barackobama.com/

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But the president’s challenge in 2012 is far different than the one he faced as a relatively unknown first-term senator seeking to reclaim the presidency for Democrats after eight years of George W. Bush’s administration.

Then, Mr. Obama pledged to confront rising health care costs, an economy that was showing signs of weakness, a nation dependent on foreign oil and a “tragic and costly war that should never have been waged.” His message — often boiled down to just “hope” and “change” — was simple: “Elect me,” he said, “and things will change.”

Now, Mr. Obama must defend his own unpopular wars, an economic recovery that remains fragile, fiscal policies that have drawn skeptics and energy policies that have stalled in the face of natural and manmade disasters.

And most of all, the president must find a way to explain how he made good on promises to change the way Washington conducts itself in spite of a brutally divisive health care fight and an ongoing budget standoff that appears to have bogged down in the same politics that Mr. Obama decried as a candidate in 2008.

In his 2007 video, Mr. Obama said he was determined to confront what he called the “smallness of our politics.” He said the biggest problem facing the United States was that leaders in Washington seemed “incapable of working together” in a system that he said was “gummed up by money and influence.”

“We have to change our politics,” he said.

Mr. Obama’s campaign will argue that he has done just that. They will point to a White House that reveals its visitor logs. They will hail the president’s willingness to compromise with Republicans to get a tax deal last year. And they will argue that Mr. Obama has improved America’s relations around the world, leading, for example, to a nuclear treaty with Russia.

“What he needs to say is that he came in to office facing unprecedented challenges — two wars and an economy that was on the cusp of the next Great Depression — and has gotten the country back on track but that there is still enormous work ahead of us,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic political consultant who worked for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

His critics will maintain that Mr. Obama’s Washington looks very much like the one he criticized as a candidate. They will probably say advisers like Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff, ran a highly political White House that did not deliver on the bipartisan promises of his campaign.

This time around, Mr. Obama will campaign with the advantages of the presidency: a bully pulpit unlike any other; an ability to raise money at an even faster pace than he did before; and official pageantry that will make him seem larger-than-life even as his rivals are participating in a process that tends to be diminishing.

But the White House also brings with it disadvantages that could exacerbate Mr. Obama’s dilemma with voters.

The president can no longer be the outsider who points to Washington derisively, accusing the practitioners of politics there of ignoring the wishes of the people. He is one of those “Washington politicians,” and his presidency has often participated in the deal-making that turns many Americans off.

Mr. Obama’s top strategists in 2008 prided themselves on their discipline in tuning out distractions and staying on message. As president, those distractions are part of governing and can’t be tuned out.

The president has found that out repeatedly since settling into the West Wing. Natural disasters like the BP oil spill and the Japanese earthquake require presidential attention. The war in Afghanistan and the difficulty in shutting down the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay earn few plaudits from the public. Presidential travel around the globe takes time, energy and focus.

“Running for the presidency is a profound decision,” Mr. Obama said four years ago.

It’s one he has now made again.