Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama with employees while touring the Linamar factory on Feb. 13, 2012 in Asheville, North Carolina.

Do President Barack Obama’s post-presidency plans include Asheville, North Carolina? White House officials are loath to discuss Obama’s plans past January 2017, but he may have just dropped a hint.

“I love coming to Asheville,” Obama said at a Linamar factory plant, where he stumped today on his post-State of the Union tour. He told the crowd that “after this whole presidency thing,” he and Michelle Obama will be “looking for a little spot, you know, to come on down, play a little golf, do a little hiking, fishing, eat barbecue.”

Obama lost North Carolina to Republican Mitt Romney in November, but he’s still feeling the love.

Since his travels in the 2008 campaign, Obama has regularly visited the state. He played basketball with the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, held his party’s 2012 convention in Charlotte and makes a point of stopping for barbecue every chance he gets.

“There are two things that keep bringing me back here: Number one is I really like the people, and number two is 12 Bones, which I will be stopping on the way back to the airport,” Obama said to cheers.

12 Bones Smokehouse was a restaurant stop for the first family on its short vacation to Asheville in April 2010. The town’s website has a page dedicated to the Obama vacation, proudly listing his itinerary and inviting visitors to “vacation like a president.”

Obama also spent a week in Asheville during the 2008 campaign preparing for a debate against then-Republican rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

When the first family took its 2010 vacation, the White House issued the following statement:

“The president first visited the Asheville area during the campaign, and he liked it so much that he vowed to take his family there. The president and first lady are planning to spend a quiet weekend enjoying some of the many things this beautiful part of the country has to offer.”

Original post is Obama’s Post-Presidency in Asheville, North Carolina? by Political Capital.

Four years later, this time with an improving economy threatened by a showdown with Republicans over the debt ceiling, Obama arrived in the East Room for the final news conference of his first term, wearing his party’s color — a blue tie — and issuing an ultimatum.

“Republicans in Congress have two choices here: They can act responsibly, and pay America’s bills, or they can act irresponsibly, and put America through another economic crisis,” he said. “But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy.”

As he prepares to take the oath of office from Chief Justice John Roberts at a small ceremony Sunday in the White House, Democrat Obama has shed the aura of a hopeful consensus builder determined to break partisan gridlock. Instead, he’s adopted a more confrontational stance, refusing to negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling and asserting executive authority on gun control.

“He’s much more battle hardened in terms of understanding that the opposition may not just be subject to sitting down and reasoning together,” said John Podesta, who was former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. “He’s shaping the battlefield now, with a much keener understanding of what the opposition looks like.”

See the full story on Obama’s second term at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Obama `Battle Hardened’ for Term Two by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leave a meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in this Nov. 17, 2010 file photo in Washington.

Updated with Obama’s comments at 1:42 pm EST

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the state’s senior senator and the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2004, was named today by President Barack Obama as his choice for the next secretary of state.

“In a sense, John’s entire life has prepared him for this role,” Obama said today.  Kerry is the son of a foreign service officer and a veteran of Vietnam, the president noted, with Kerry standing beside him. “One of the more exceptional things we’ve seen in recent decades is when John led the way (along with Sen. John McCain) to restore our diplomatic relations with Vietnam.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a former senator from New York and former first lady, will be leaving the post as the nation’s top diplomat.

In Kerry, Obama has a replacement with deep experience in world affairs. He is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“He is not going to need a lot of on-the-job training,” Obama said.

Obama also has a candidate who can expect easy Senate confirmation. It was Obama himself, then a candidate for the Senate from Illinois, who delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston that nominated Kerry for president in 2004.

Kerry is a decorated war veteran who came home to protest U.S. engagement in Vietnam and first was elected to the Senate in 1984.

The senator’s seat will be filled by appointment, with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in a position to find a Democrat who can help his party hold the office after the state just this year chose Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren to replace Republican Sen. Scott Brown. State law will require a special election between 145 and 160 days after the vacancy.

Original post is John Kerry: Secretary of State by Political Capital.

Photograph by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

President Barack Obama and Buchenwald concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel visit the Little Camp memorial at the former Buchenwald concentration camp on June 5, 2009 near Weimar, Germany.

Conversations with Barack and Elie?

President Barack Obama and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, two Nobel Peace Prize laureates, may be teaming up to co-write a book based on their friendship and talks the two have shared over the last several years.

Wiesel in an interview with Bloomberg today said he raised the idea of such a project with Obama months ago. He said it was important to share their conversations about history and philosophy because of their distinctly different pasts. No timeline for any project has been set, and Wiesel said it may be something they revisit after Obama finishes his second term.

“These conversations are so good, why not actually give them more exposure, so to speak,” Wiesel said. “One day we’ll do it but not now. It’s not one of my priorities, not his.”

A person familiar with those discussions said that while Obama reveres Wiesel and was intrigued and agreeable in principle to the project, there’s no final agreement. There are many details that would need to be worked out with lawyers and agents, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“We come from such different backgrounds really,” Wiesel said. “He’s in politics. I have nothing to do with politics. I’m a teacher of philosophy and literature.”

Their friendship began in June 2009 when Obama toured with Wiesel the former Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald in Germany. Wiesel had been an inmate there.

During that trip, Obama asked Wiesel if he remembered the first time they had met. Wiesel said yes — when Obama was an Illinois senator and Wiesel and his wife dropped by his senate office.

Obama said they had met many years before that.

“Twenty-odd years ago, you came to give a speech in California at a small college and I was there,” Wiesel recounted Obama telling him. “And I remember the speech. And that was Occidental College.”

Obama was a college student at Occidental in Los Angeles before he transferred to Columbia University in New York City.

“He just said the speech remains with me,” Wiesel said.

Original post is Obama and Wiesel: Potential Co-Authors by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

President Barack Obama said he invited Congressional Republican leaders to come to the White House to discuss ways of the avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff.

Let the talks begin.

President Barack Obama has invited the chief Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to the White House next week to begin talks on a plan to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

“The American people voted for action,” Obama today in an appearance at  the White House, delivering  his first public remarks on the budget and deficit since winning re-election this week.

The president maintains that any solution must include spending cuts and raising revenue, including raising taxes on the wealthiest.

The election showed “a majority of Americans agree with my approach,” he said, calling for immediate action by lawmakers to prevent rates from rising for middle-income taxpayers when the Bush-era tax cuts expire at year’s end. “We shouldn’t need long negotiations or drama.”

House Speaker John Boehner today said he too is ready to seek “common ground,” but resists the idea of higher tax rates. He is willing to consider new revenue coming from“ tax reform,” the elimination of unjustifiable tax exemptions, and wants entitlement spending reformed as well. He declined to detail any more today, saying neither he nor the White House should be boxed in.

Mark Silva contributed to this report. 

Original post is Obama: Cliff Talks Start Next Week — No `Drama,’ at the White House by Political Capital.

Photograph by Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama talk with senior campaign advisor David Axelrod following Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

David Axelrod has known Barack Obama a long time.

Yet the senior political adviser to the president of the United States says he’s never seen Obama “more exhilarated than he is right now.”

He’s watching Obama make the closing arguments of his re-election campaign, with a three-stop tour today through Ohio, the most hard-fought state of the election campaign, one which has been essential to any Republican’s formula for winning the White House, one where Obama holds a narrow advantage over Republican Mitt Romney in opinion polls.

It’s Obama 50 percent, Romney 47 percent in a CNN/ORC International poll released today.

Today, Axelrod said in Lima, Ohio, the energy in Obama’s speeches is coming from “his loins.”

Original post is Obama’s `Loins’ Drive Final Appeal by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally at Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Nov. 1, 2012.

President Obama, resuming his re-election campaign after spending the last several days tending to Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts, kicked off  his final sprint of the 2012 election making closing argument to voters through three states and three time zones.

Wearing a brown leather bomber jacket in the frigid Wisconsin air — a token of the commander-in-chief’s office — Obama modulated between hitting Republican Mitt Romney and striking a hopeful and optimistic tone that harked back to the tenor of the closing days of the 2008 race when he was the “change” candidate. With Romney closing his campaign telling voters that he’ll bring the change they’re seeking, Obama said his Republican challenger would only institute the same policies that voters sought to change four years ago.

“We know what change looks like, and what the governor is offering sure ain’t change,” Obama said. “After four years as president you know me by now. You may not agree with every decision I’ve made, you may be frustrated at the pace of change but you know what I believe, you know where I stand.”

Obama cast himself as the “champion” for the Middle Class. Saturating his remarks with the words “we” and “change,” he repeatedly told the 2,600 supporters gathered on the airport tarmac that fighting for the needed change would take time and pledged that if they awarded him with another four years in office, he’d continue to work to change the nature of politics.

“Their bet is on cynicism, but Wisconsin my bet is on you,” Obama said. “As long as there’s a single American who wants a job but can’t find one, our work isn’t done.”

“We have everything we need to thrive in this new economy in this new century and there’s not a country on earth that wouldn’t trade places with the United States of America,” Obama said.

Obama began his remarks on a somber yet uplifting note, discussing the ongoing efforts to recover from Sandy’s devastation. He honored the courage of all those affected, saying it demonstrates that people can rise above politics during such a bitterly divisive period, just a few days from the election.

“For the past few days all of us have been focused on one of the worst storms of our lifetimes,” he said in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “We’ve also been inspired these past few days because when disaster strikes we see America at its best. All the petty differences that consume us in normal times all seem to melt away. There are no democrats or republicans during a storm, there are just fellow Americans.”

Original post is Obama in Bomber Jacket on Road: Romney `Sure Ain’t Change’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama picks up an order of donuts at a Krispy Kreme donut store in Tampa, Florida, on Oct. 25, 2012.

First lady Michelle Obama is on a health kick.

So one might expect President Barack Obama to tip-toe through a Krispy Kreme donut shop.

Not in a swing state, 12 days from Election Day.

After promising Ohioans and other swing-state voters sweet Halloween candy in lieu of fruit at the White House this year, the president began Day Two of his 48-hour blitz with donuts.

The president stopped at a Krispy Kreme donut shop in Tampa, the biggest of all swing states, to pick up a few dozen glazed treats.

“Let the president buy these guys donuts,” he said on behalf of two young boys with their father, who make Krispy Kreme their Thursday morning pre-school ritual. “They’re on me for those guys.”

After stepping out with a few dozen, which Obama noted to the cashier were “pre-ordered,” the president then motorcaded over to Fire House 14 to make a special delivery.

He stipulated that the donuts were in fact approved by the first lady.

—

Sent From Bloomberg Mobile MSG

Original post is Obama’s Krispy Kreme Stop — Firehouse Delivery, too: Florida by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama chats with host Jay Leno during a break in the taping of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on Oct. 24, 2012 at NBC Studios in Burbank, California.

When a president rides, it’s in an armored limousine. When he flies, it’s Air Force One.

Yet President Barack Obama did get out for a little “joy ride” recently — taking a friend’s electric Chevy Volt for a spin.

“That was my big joy ride. Three times around the South Lawn driveway,” Obama told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” — the president’s eyes rolling with sarcasm for his expedition around the White House grounds.

In the third leg of what he’s dubbed the “48-hour campaign marathon extravaganza,”  Obama took a little detour to Los Angeles for his appearance on the late-night show, where he covered a wide range of matters — from Europe’s debt crisis to Wall Street reform — with plenty of politically themed laugh lines.

Obama rarely misses an opportunity to herald his rescue of the U.S. auto industry, and last night was no exception. Asked by Leno which team he’d put his money on in the World Series – the Detroit Tigers or the San Francisco Giants, Obama spent a little time bemoaning the loss of his beloved Chicago White Sox to the Tigers before getting to the punch line.

“I have spent a lot of time in Detroit lately and I didn’t want to let Detroit go bankrupt, so in this particular World Series, I may be a little partial,” Obama said.

Letting Detroit go bankrupt is, of course, a reference to Republican rival Mitt Romney’s Nov. 19, 2008, op-ed in the New York Times, under the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” in which he argued against using federal funds to bailout the U.S. automakers.

Sticking with the U.S. auto theme, the president also let slip his secret about the tour of the South Lawn in a Volt.

“I’m having fun,” Obama said, noting that the Secret Service was getting nervous. “I went around once. I was really kind of getting into it.”

He decided to go around again, he said, which led the Secret Service to call out an APB: “Under No Circumstances is he to leave the gate.’

The president also had a message for any trick-or-treaters stopping by the White House on Halloween night: If you’re from a swing state, you’ll get better candy.

Leno asked Obama if the White House got “egged” last year because First Lady Michelle Obama handed out fruit as part of her anti-childhood obesity initiative, Let’s Move.

“It is an election year, so candy for everybody,” Obama exclaimed. “If anybody comes from Ohio to the White House, they will get a Hershey bar about this big,” said the president, holding arms up wide.

Original post is Obama’s `Joy Ride,’ Tigers Pitch, Swing-State Hershey Bars: Jay Leno by Political Capital.

Photograph by Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

President Barack Obama jogs up the stairs of the stage as he arrives at a campaign event at Veteran's Memorial Park, on Oct. 18, 2012, in Manchester, N.H.

And so begins what President Barack Obama has dubbed the two-day “fly-around, campaign marathon extravaganza.”

Obama launched his final sprint to Election Day with an eight-state blitz across the country, stopping for rallies, meet-and-greets with supporters and an appearance on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

First stop: Iowa, the state that propelled his longshot candidacy in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

After flying from Washington this morning for a Davenport rally, the president dined with three campaign volunteers at Antonella”s Pizzeria in downtown. Vicki Felger, Marcia Teshak and Deb Willaredt were all shocked when the president began rattling off information about them, showing he read his briefing books.

“I tell you, I do my homework before I sit down. I am not going to just show up. You guys know everything about me,” he said smiling.

With early voting taking place in all the battleground states Obama is visiting, he’s using the next two days to try to recapture momentum, organize supporters and get them to the polls. At the Davenport rally, the 3,500 supporters there all had early voting locations on the backs of their tickets.

Polls show the president with a slight lead in the state where he won by 10 points in 2008 and voters have been casting ballots since Sept. 27.

Later today, Obama will also visit Denver, Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada, where singer Katy Perry will perform.

In between, he’ll hop over to Los Angeles for a taping with Jay Leno. No time for placing any bets on his election odds — after Vegas, he’ll fly overnight to Tampa, Florida, for a morning rally and later Thursday hit Richmond, Virginia, making a detour tomorrow to Chicago to cast his own early ballot and end the day in Ohio.

Original post is Obama’s Two-Day `Extravaganza’ — With a Stop at Jay Leno’s by Political Capital.