Larry Downing / Reuters

President Barack Obama waves after he talks about the rising costs of student loans while at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, April 25, 2012.

The president this week drove a message without distraction, but also pushed the limits of “official” travel … Boehner accuses Obama of making the presidency “smaller” – he’s become Mitt Romney’s biggest ally on Capitol Hill … Outside group accuses Obama of being too “cool” to be president … Bill Clinton testifies to Obama’s strength, as the campaign highlights the bin Laden raid … Cold War kids … Obama speaks to troops, women … Romney’s in Ohio – at a college campus with Gov. Kasich.

*** Driving a message and pushing the limits: It was a week in which the Obama campaign was remarkably able to push a single issue without distraction from something (or someone) – on student loans. The president took (justified) criticism for pushing that message on official business with Air Force One in swing states, on college campuses (not one but three), while mixing in slow-jamming the news. House Speaker John Boehner yesterday accused the president of starting a “fake fight,” demanded that he reimburse the government for the trips, said it was “beneath the dignity” of the White House, and even went so far as to charge, “This is the biggest job in the world and I've never seen a President make it smaller.” At the end of the day, Obama was able to get out and appeal to groups in areas that are going to matter to his reelection – and, more importantly from a trip-legitimacy standpoint, there is supposed to be a vote today (the last vote by about noon ET, we’re told), on the “policy” in the House, something that might not have happened without the president pushing the issue. Still, the White House pushed the limit on this when they picked three universities all in battleground states. Had they picked just one in a non-battleground, it would have a little higher ground to stand on.

*** A “Stark Contrast”: The Romney campaign pens a memo this morning, highlighting what it sees as the difference between its candidate and President Obama. “This past week previewed the stark contrast facing voters in this election. Governor Romney’s speech Tuesday night in New Hampshire contained a crisp and specific critique of President Obama’s policy failures and his own positive vision for a better America.” But: “President Obama … spent the week slow-jamming the news, striking a Heisman pose, and trying to pick a fight over student loans to help the one-in-two recent college graduates who are either jobless or underemployed as a result of his policies (which is apparently really funny stuff to the President). Unfortunately for him, Republicans agree with the need for a temporary extension, but want it paid for by cutting spending rather than raising taxes. So instead of the fight he was hoping for, he got a debate over taxes and spending – which he wasn’t hoping for.”

*** Too “Cool” for the White House? On cue, Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads is up with a video called, “Cool,” which cuts together clips of Obama wearing 3-D glasses, dancing on “Ellen,” singing Al Green, drinking a beer, killing a fly, calling Kanye West a “jackass,” and slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon. It asks, “After 4 years of a celebrity president, is your life any better?” The ad picks up where John McCain left off with his “Biggest Celebrity in the World” ad, a narrative that was starting to take hold… until McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.

*** Superficial vs. Serious – Bill Clinton testifies: But the Obama campaign is out with its own strong and sober video, featuring Bill Clinton as a testifier. It is juxtaposition to the superficiality narrative the Crossroads ad tries to create. “There’s one thing that George Bush said that was right,” Clinton says, “The president is the ‘Decider-in-Chief.” It then shows pictures of Obama in the Situation Room during the Osama bin Laden raid. “Nobody can make that decision for you,” Clinton says. “Look he knew what would happen. Suppose the Navy Seals had gone in there, and it hadn’t been bin Laden. Suppose they’d been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him. … He took the harder, and more honorable path.” Then, a graphic comes up asking, “Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?” And highlights this Romney quote: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” This Sunday, Obama will raise money with Clinton at the Virginia home of Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and former Virginia gubernatorial candidate. By the way, there’s been a lot of talk and about Obama money problems, especially with the Super PAC, Priorities USA. Bloomberg today notes that Clinton backers are waiting for Obama backers to start writing checks to the PAC before they will.

*** Boehner, Romney’s biggest ally on Capitol Hill: Back to Boehner’s attack. Of course, Democrats made similar charges against former President George W. Bush in 2004. But as NBC’s Luke Russert points out, Boehner, who stayed out of the endorsement fray, has emerged as Romney’s chief ally on Capitol Hill. “One of the more fascinating developments in the last two weeks on Capitol Hill has been the degree to which House Speaker John Boehner has gone after President Obama and helped to try and frame Obama's general election matchup against Mitt Romney.” Since endorsing Romney 10 days ago, Boehner went on the attack the next day, “accusing Obama of being ‘AWOL’ for the last 6 months and on a ‘constant campaign.’” He accused the president of “failing to lead” on the economy and on legislation related to jobs, student loans, gas prices, and the national drug shortage – instead opting for “campaign theatrics.” The DNC’s Brad Woodhouse responded on Twitter, leveling this: “Let’s be clear: John Boehner is the most useless, feckless, weak and failed Speaker of the House perhaps in American history.” Wow. Here’s NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell’s report on NBC Nightly News last night.

*** Outside spending ramps up: Those aren’t the only ads out there. Americans for Prosperity -- a conservative group with ties to the billionaire Koch Brothers, who made millions in the oil and gas industry -- is actually ON AIR in the next two weeks with a $6.1 million ad buy in eight states – all battlegrounds: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, and Virginia. It once again focuses on clean energy and, in an odd way, outsourcing. “Fact: Billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries. … Tell President Obama: American tax dollars should help American taxpayers.” There’s also a seven-figure ad buy up in Wisconsin in that recall race supporting Democrat Kathleen Falk ahead of the primary there May 8 to take on Gov. Scott Walker. And the NRCC is going up with $150,000 in ads in the Gabrielle Giffords district, AZ-8.

*** Cold war kids: Vice President Joe Biden was in full attack-dog mode yesterday, lambasting Mitt Romney’s foreign policy, saying that he “mired in a Cold War mindset.” And two Romney advisers added fuel to that attack yesterday when one, former Navy Secretary John Lehman said: "We are seeing the Soviets pushing into the Arctic with no response from us.” And Pierre Prosper, a former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, said, "The United States abandoned its missile defense sites in Poland and Czechoslovakia, yet Russia does nothing but obstruct us, or efforts in Iran and Syria." Czechoslovakia split into what’s now the Czech Republic and Slovakia… in 1993, two years after the Soviet Union fell. Remember, Romney called Russia America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

*** Obama signs order on troops, education, then speaks to women: Today, the president pushes the issue of education again in Georgia at Fort Stewart, where he’ll sign an executive order “intended to help protect active-duty troops and veterans from deceptive and misleading practices.” (He’ll make remarks at 12:35 pm ET). And who’s going to disagree with that? Later, the president speaks to the National Women’s Issues Conference at 4:55 pm ET in DC. Women are, of course, a key group for the president. In the latest, NBC/WSJ poll, women approved of the job the president was doing by a 52%-43% margin and favored him over Romney, 53%-41%. In 2008, Obama won them 56%-43%, an improvement from 2004, when John Kerry won them by just three points, 51%-48%. Mitt Romney is in that all-important swing state of Ohio at… a college campus (Otterbein University in Westerville). Coincidence? He’ll speak at 3:05 pm ET. Ohio Gov. John Kasich will campaign with Romney in the afternoon. Kasich, of course, isn’t the most popular politician in the country.

***Elsewhere On the trail: Newt Gingrich continues his farewell tour, with stops in North Carolina. … Ron Paul hosts a town hall in Houston, TX.

Countdown to Election Day: 194 days

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The Supreme Court, suddenly at the heart of presidential politics, is preparing what could be blockbuster rulings on health care and immigration shortly before the fall election.

The court, sometimes an afterthought in presidential elections, is throwing a new element of uncertainty into the campaign taking shape between President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

Sharply divided between four conservatives, four liberals and one conservative-leaning swing justice, the court already is viewed as being nearly as partisan as Congress. Within weeks it will rule on the contentious 2010 Democratic-crafted health care overhaul and a Republican-backed Arizona law that's seen as a model for cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Obama sometimes seems to be running against the court, or at least its conservative members. Whether that will sway voters in November is unclear. The public receives far less information and visual imagery of the Supreme Court than it does of the White House and Congress.

An anti-court strategy by Obama "will fire up his base, but I doubt it will make any bigger impact on swing voters," said Republican consultant John Feehery.

Recommended: House GOP set to curb college student loan costs 

Meanwhile, strategists in both parties are hoping they can turn the upcoming decisions to their advantage — for instance, possibly boosting Democratic turnout among Hispanic voters unhappy with GOP immigration policies or emboldening the Republican base if Obama's landmark health care law is ruled unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court already has played a huge and direct role in U.S. presidential politics. Its 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore settled the bitter 2000 contest by barring a Florida ballot recount, which Democrats hoped would prevent George W. Bush's election.

And the 2010 Citizens United case, also decided 5-4, greatly eased political spending restrictions on corporations and unions. It gave birth to the "super PACs" that are reshaping campaigns by raising millions of anonymously donated dollars for TV ads attacking Obama, Romney and targeted congressional candidates.

By holding well-publicized hearings on the health care and immigration cases — and now writing keenly awaited decisions — the court is stirring passions on key issues in this year's elections. Less clear, however, is how the politics might play out.

Many court-watchers expect the justices to throw out most or all of the health law, which Republicans derisively call "Obamacare." During public oral arguments, the most conservative justices questioned Congress' authority to require all Americans to obtain health insurance.

Romney may be poorly positioned to exploit such a ruling, however. The similar "individual mandate" that he successfully pushed as Massachusetts governor was a model for Obama's federal plan.

"I don't think the Romney campaign will want to make health care a major issue," said Democratic strategist Doug Hattaway. "Every time Romney criticizes the president's health care reform, he opens himself up to the Etch A Sketch attack."

Hattaway was referring to claims that Romney switches back and forth on important policies, erasing and redrawing pages when convenient.

Republican strategist Terry Holt said a court decision overturning the health care law would be an unmistakable setback for Obama.

"It repudiates the singular achievement of this administration," Holt said.

Feehery agreed, saying such a ruling would make Obama "look like a weak president."

But it might help other Democrats, Feehery said. "It takes away a law that is unpopular," he said, "but puts health care back on the agenda for the Democrats, which has been a winning issue in the past."

In the immigration case, the Obama administration opposes Arizona's requirement that police check the legal status of people they stop for other reasons.

The law, pushed by a Republican governor and Legislature, has angered some voters, including Hispanics, in battleground states such as Florida, New Mexico and Colorado.

A number of court analysts predict the justices will uphold parts of the Arizona law but may overturn others. That could energize Americans who want tougher sanctions, including deportation, against millions of illegal immigrants in the country.

"This could prove problematic for Romney," Feehery said, because it would pit his conservative base against much-needed Hispanic voters in targeted states. "If Romney handles it right, by largely ignoring it, it could take out a major source of irritation for Hispanics and maybe help a portion of them see the good side of Romney," Feehery said.

Earlier this month, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, delivered what some considered a misleading warning to the court regarding the health care law.

"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," the president said. "And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we've heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example."

White House spokesmen tried to explain that Obama recognizes the court's power to review laws passed by Congress. His point, said spokesman Jay Carney, is that the Supreme Court traditionally has "deferred to Congress' authority in matters of national economic importance."

Republican leaders are ready to try pushing legislation through the House holding down interest rates on federal loans to millions of college students.

Democrats say that's a goal the GOP has adopted only lately, but the top House Democrat is opposing the measure anyway in a fight that highlights how election-year politics is coloring Congress' work.

The House planned to vote Friday on the bill, which would keep interest rates at 3.4 percent for subsidized Stafford loans, instead of rising as scheduled to 6.8 percent on July 1. The GOP-written package would cover its $5.9 billion cost by plucking money from a preventive health fund established in President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul law — a cut many Democrats are reluctant to make.

Friday's vote comes with congressional Republicans and Democrats, as well as Obama and his near-certain GOP opponent this fall, Mitt Romney, competing at every turn over who has the best prescription to wring jobs out of the still-struggling economy. The student loan battle fits nicely into that theme, with 7.4 million low- and middle-income students and their parents reliant on Stafford loans and a college education symbolizing the ticket to economic success.

The vote also follows days of campaign-style road trips that Obama used to get in front of the issue and portray Republicans as foot-draggers on it. The week began with Romney saying he favored keeping loan rates low, remarks he hopes will prevent Obama from making the matter a campaign fight but may have helped prod congressional Republicans into action.

Recommended: Supreme Court moves to center of presidential race 

On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, tried putting the focus on Obama's travel this week to three college campuses, where the president used rousing rallies to talk up his student loan effort.

"Our country's facing some major economic and fiscal challenges, yet here's the president wasting time on a fake fight to try to gain his own re-election," Boehner told reporters. He called the college visits "political stunts and, frankly, they aren't worth it and worthy of his office." He said Obama should repay taxpayers for the use of Air Force One for the trip.

White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the travel, saying it helped win over Republicans.

"This is official business. And he did it effectively," Carney said.

Democrats noted that Republicans previously had questioned the wisdom of keeping students' interest rates low. They also accused Republicans of reversing themselves, after voting earlier this month for a 2013 federal budget that let Stafford loan rates double as scheduled.

For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the emphasis was the GOP's cuts in the preventive health program, whose initiatives she said include breast cancer screening and children's immunizations. She contrasted that with a Democratic bill extending the low student rates by cutting subsidies to oil and natural gas companies, which is opposed by the GOP.

Pelosi characterized the Republican view as, "'We prefer tax subsidies for big oil rather than the health of America's women.'"

Republicans noted that many Democrats had voted earlier this year to take money from the preventive health fund to help pay to keep doctors' Medicare reimbursements from dropping. Obama's own budget in February proposed cutting $4 billion from the same fund to pay for some of his priorities.

The higher interest rates, if triggered, would affect the 7.4 million undergraduates expected to borrow new Stafford loans beginning July 1. This year, 8 million students took out such loans, averaging $3,568, according to the Education Department.

Despite the partisan battle lines, it seemed possible that some members of both parties would defect from their leaders' positions.

Heritage Action for America, a conservative group, was lobbying Republicans to oppose the GOP bill and let interest rates rise, saying to do otherwise would burden taxpayers. Several conservative GOP lawmakers said Thursday they hadn't decided how to vote.

On the Democratic side, party leaders were pressuring their rank-and-file to oppose the Republican measure. Some Democrats were eager to vote to keep student loan rates low, though it meant accepting GOP health care cuts.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., said some Democrats "may feel upon reflection that they've got to swallow hard but swallow" those health care reductions. He said he hadn't decided how to vote.

Senate Democrats had their own version of the bill. It would keep current rates in effect for another year, but its funding source was one Republicans said they would not tolerate. It would make it harder for people earning at least $250,000 annually who own some privately held corporations to escape paying Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes on parts of their income.

One of the more fascinating developments in the last two weeks on Capitol Hill has been the degree to which House Speaker John Boehner has gone after President Obama and helped to try and frame Obama's general election matchup against Mitt Romney.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

House Speaker John Boehner hastily arranged a late afternoon press conference on Wednesday to announce that the GOP would take up a student loans interest rate extension bill on Friday that would be paid for by stripping $6 billion from monies used to fund Obama's health care law.

After endorsing Romney on April 17, Boehner started the attack the very next day, accusing Obama of being "AWOL" for the last 6 months and on a "constant campaign." Boehner pushed Obama on his handling of the economy, asking, "Where's he been, what are his ideas?” and was critical of the president  for “failing to lead.”

On Wednesday, Boehner went after Obama for his recent trips to the Iowa, Colorado and North Carolina saying they were "campaign theatrics."

The Republican speaker took his criticism a step further Thursday morning, when he criticized Obama for using taxpayer funds for "campaign speeches" before launching into a blistering assault saying the president was falling short by not leading on jobs legislation, student loan interest rates, gas prices, the national drug shortage -- all the while going around the country drumming up "fake issues."

"This is the biggest job in the world and I've never seen a president make it smaller," Boehner said. "The president keeps attempting to invent these fake fights because he doesn't have a record of success or a positive agenda for our country."

He continued, "It's as simple as this, the emperor has no clothes. They can't talk about their record on jobs because their policies have made the economy worse. They can't talk about their record on spending because the president's policies have added 5 trillion dollars to the national debt. And they can't talk about their record on gas prices because gas prices have more than doubled on the president's watch."

NBC News today asked Boehner if he was in contact with the Romney campaign and coordinating these types of attacks. He said it had "been awhile” since he spoke to team Romney and that he "made it a habit not to talk to the candidate or the campaigns during this process." When pressed if he was in fact doing Romney’s bidding, Boehner answered, "I'm doing my own."

While Boehner may not be frequently speaking with Romney’s Boston-based campaign, he significantly assisted Romney this week by announcing he was putting a GOP version of student loan legislation on the floor. This past Tuesday. Romney stated that he supported extending student loan rates at 3.4 percent, but wasn't specific on how he’d pay for it.

Even though this issue had rarely been mentioned by House Republicans recently, Boehner hastily arranged a late afternoon press conference on Wednesday to announce that the GOP would take up a student loans interest rate extension bill on Friday that would be paid for by stripping $6 billion from monies used to fund Obama's health care law. Romney was then free to support Boehner's bill and a Republican option that made the student loan issue deficit neutral.

A GOP aide speaking on the condition of anonymity told NBC News that, last week, one of Romney’s policy aides gave the House GOP leadership a “heads up” that the campaign was going to support the extension of student loans at 3.4 percent. Upon hearing this news, the House GOP formulated a plan that would pay for an extension of the loans that wouldn’t add to the debt and inevitably gave Romney something to back that was a GOP alternative.

One GOP House member told NBC News that Boehner being Romney’s “attack dog” would be positive for the party: “He’s certainly easier to understand than Romney and makes the case against the president in a more defined way. It’ll help us.”

While the presidential race begins to heat up, this week could be remembered for when House Speaker John Boehner ratcheted up the rhetoric went into his own “campaign."

MOORESVILLE, NC -- Even though his presidential campaign "will go bye-bye," Newt Gingrich on Thursday said he and his wife plan to campaign through the fall to help presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.

"I'm going to look at how I can be helpful, because I suspect people will still show up to hear me," Gingrich told voters at luncheon here. "Callista and I are going to campaign through October."

Though today, just 25 people attended the midday event here, leaving a roomful of empty chairs. Some of those seats were taken by Secret Service, an area the campaign has taken heat for recently because of the thousands of dollars the protection was costing taxpayers, even Gingrich he had become more of a sideshow than serious contender for the GOP nomination.

After losing the Deleware primary on Tuesday, the latest in a long string of electoral defeats, the former Speaker of the House acknowledged he will end his campaign next week. He will continue with his packed schedule through North Carolina, saying he felt an obligation to fulfill previous commitments here.

"The campaign will go bye-bye, but I'll be a citizen," Gingrich told a supporter asking about the candidate's future. "I've been an active citizen since I was 15."

The once top-tier GOP candidate said he would welcome the opportunity to stump for former rival Romney. He has spoken to the former Massachusetts governor and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus about playing a role in the party going forward. At a stop at a diner here this morning, Gingrich continued his pledge to forge ahead to the summer convention in Tampa -- only now, as a citizen and not a candidate.

"We're also going to go back to the private sector to earn some money," Gingrich said. "It's been a long, expensive 2 years."

Gingrich's now-bare-bones campaign faces deep debts; he had previously been a paid contributor to FOX News, but criticized his former employer, saying he could get a fairer shake from CNN; and his flagship company, The Gingrich Group, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy earlier this year.

"I ran for president and, candidly, wished I had done better," Gingrich said Thursday morning. "But I learned a lot."

And while the former frontrunner says he's eager to help, it likely will not be on the Romney ticket. "I think the vice president will be somebody much younger," Gingrich said. "That would be my advice to Romney."

Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (R) made strides toward putting a softer face on his regimen of budgetary reforms in the face of liberal critics, who say it is especially conservative and victimizes the poor.

Ryan delivered his major fiscal policy address at Georgetown University, where he defended his budget roadmap in the context of his own Catholic faith.

"The overarching to threat to our whole society today is the exploding federal debt. The Holy Father himself, Pope Benedict, has charged governments, communities and individuals running up high debt levels are 'living at the expense of future generations and living in untruth.'" Ryan said.

The Ryan budget has weathered criticism from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic lay people for its cuts to social programs, in conflict with the church's social justice teachings. A small group of protesters from the liberal group Catholics United gathered outside the venue for Ryan's speech at Georgetown, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church.

Citing the principle of subsidiarity, Ryan went on to say that smaller, more localized government is better able to serve the needy than federal bureaucrats. At times Ryan seemed to echo Mitt Romney's language on the president's "government-centered society" versus his vision of an "opportunity society."

The speech attracted considerable attention because of Ryan's role as a highly-speculated possible running mate for Romney this November. In a question-and-answer session following the speech, Ryan would not dismiss the possibility of serving as Romney's vice presidential nominee, but said he was "content with my job" and didn't want to deal in "hypotheticals."

Democrats have been eager to make Ryan's budget proposals the last two years, especially should the Wisconsin Republican join the national ticket. They accused Ryan's plan of ending Medicare as most Americans have come to know it, and have gotten a degree of political traction from that attack.

To that end, Ryan's speech Thursday was partly directed toward couching his plan in a post-partisan aura. He made strides toward emphasizing fairness and economic mobility.

"Pro-growth tax reform, by lowering rates for all Americans while closing loopholes that primarily benefit the well off, can eliminate unfairness in the tax code and ensure a level playing field for all," he said.

And at another point, Ryan sought to cast off the shackles of part affiliation. "These principles are not exclusive to one party," he said, referring to the concept of American exceptionalism, which GOP presidential candidates have stressed on the campaign trail this spring.

AP via Rolling Stone

The Rolling Stone cover with President Obama. The issue hits newsstands Friday, April 27.

President Barack Obama knows the stakes of this year's election are high.

After all, he told Rolling Stone magazine, his legacy thus far has been met with mixed reviews.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in June on whether the individual insurance mandate that is a key component of the Obama administration’s health care law is unconstitutional.

Though the economy has stabilized, a recent NBC/WSJ poll found that voters feel presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney leads Obama 40% to 34% when it comes to considering which candidate has savvier ideas on shoring up the economy.

Still, Obama feels confident that this fall voters will reject what he sees as Republicans' "shift to an agenda that is far out of the mainstream — and, in fact, is contrary to a lot of Republican precepts."

He also underscored that though there have been tense exchanges between his administration and GOP congressional leadership, the president does not see the relationship as “frosty.”

“When John Boehner and I sit down, I enjoy a conversation with him. I don’t think he’s a bad person,” Obama said. “I think he’s patriotic. I think that the Republicans up on the Hill care about this country, but they have a very ideologically rigid view of how to move this country forward, and a lot of how they approach issues is defined by ‘Will this help us defeat the president?’ as opposed to ‘Will this move the country forward?'"

In the interview, which writer and Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner described as "somber," Obama said that in many ways, the election is a referendum on his first-term performance.

"Now, the burden on me is going to be to describe for the American people how the progress we’ve made over the past three years, if sustained will actually lead to the kind of economic security that they’re looking for,” Obama said. “There’s understandable skepticism because things are still tough out there.”

Obama acknowledged that the unemployment rate, which is at 8.2 percent, is “way too high.”

"You have folks whose homes are underwater because the housing bubble burst, people are still feeling the pinch from high gas prices,” Obama said. “The fact of the matter is that times are still tough for too many people, and the recovery is still not as robust as we’d like, and that’s what will make it a close election.”

The past four years have also given the president an opportunity to examine issues of race and describes his own views on the topic as “complicated.”

"Race has been one of the fault lines in American culture and American politics from the start," he said. "I never bought into the notion that by electing me, somehow we were entering into a post-racial period.

"On the other hand, I’ve seen in my own lifetime how racial attitudes have changed and improved, and anybody who suggests they haven’t isn’t paying attention or is trying to make a rhetorical point.

"We all see it every day, and me being in this Oval Office is a testimony to changes that have been taking place.”

More: Obama leads Romney by six points, but Republican ahead on economy
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TODAY.com contributor Halimah Abdullah is the site’s woman in Washington.

NEW YORK -- Vice President Joe Biden charged Thursday that a flip-flopping Mitt Romney remains "mired in a Cold War mindset" and has "a profound misunderstanding of the responsibilities of a president and a commander in chief."

In one of the Obama campaign's harshest critiques of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to date, Biden accused the GOP's presumptive nominee of cravenly criticizing the president on policies he's previously backed, unwisely planning to "outsource" foreign policy decision-making to the State Department, and being "completely out of touch" with the realities of the global stage today.

And he implied that his boss's chief rival would not have taken the same action as the president in greenlighting a risky operation to kill 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

"You can't say for certain what Gov. Romney would have done," Biden said of Obama's decision in remarks to a crowd of about 500 students and foreign policy buffs at New York University's School of Law.

Invoking his unofficial slogan for the 2012 re-election campaign -- "Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive" -- Biden warned, "You have to ask yourself, if Gov. Romney were president, could he have used the same slogan in reverse?"

Much of Biden's over-45 minute address centered on President Barack Obama's leadership in officially ending the Iraq War, drawing down troop levels in Afghanistan, and pulling the trigger on a bin Laden mission that the vice president said would have ended Obama's political career if it failed.

In each case, Biden argued that Romney at some past point in his political career had voiced support for those objectives but had criticized them for political expediency during the GOP primary.

"In the face of the challenges that we now understand are ahead of us, what would Gov. Romney do?" he asked. "The truth is we don't know for certain but we know where the governor starts. He starts with a profound misunderstanding of the responsibilities of a president and a commander in chief."

Biden, a longtime Democratic leader of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said that Romney hopes to "outsource" international policy issues to the State Department, citing a 2007 quote in which the former Massachusetts governor said "a president is not a foreign policy expert."

"That kind of thinking may work for a CEO but I assure you it will not and cannot work for a president," Biden said.

In a conference call with reporters held before the vice president's speech, Romney's foreign policy advisers pushed back on the idea that the GOP leader would return the United States to unpopular Bush-era policies, dubbing the current commander-in-chief's worldview a "Carter/Obama doctrine" that deviates from America's traditional exercise of "peace through strength."

The vice president's address was the fifth "framing speech" in a series intended to draw stark contrasts between Obama and Romney, although today's was the first since Romney's GOP rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum announced their withdrawals from the primary contest.

Biden's tone was somber for much of the speech, although he won laughter from the mostly student-aged crowd when describing the president's decisiveness.

"This guy's got a backbone like a ramrod. For real. For real," he insisted as the audience giggled.

And, quoting the old foreign policy adage to "speak softly and carry a big stick," Biden responded with his own, well, schtick.

"I promise you, the president has a big stick," he said.

NBC's Garrett Haake contributed

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) demanded on Thursday that President Obama's re-election campaign reimburse the Treasury for the cost of a two-day trip to three swing states.

At his weekly press conference on Capitol Hill, the GOP speaker accused the president of essentially campaigning during his trip this week, which took him to three college campuses in three swing states to talk, ostensibly, about student loan interest rates.

"This week the president traveled across the country on the taxpayer's dime at a cost of $179,000 an hour insisting that Congress fix a problem that we already working on. Frankly I think this is beneath the dignity of the White House," Boehner said.

Richard Drew / AP

House Speaker John Boehner demanded on Thursday that President Obama's re-election campaign reimburse the Treasury for the cost of a two-day trip to three swing states.

"And for the president to make a campaign issue about this and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campus on taxpayer's money to try to make this a political issue is pathetic," he added. "His campaign ought to be reimbursing the treasury for the cost of this trip.  Our country is facing some major economic and fiscal challenges, yet here's the president wasting time on a fake fight to try to gain his own re-election."

The president's trip was directed toward student loan reforms, making it official White House travel. The Obama campaign reimburses the government for any of the president's political trip.

But Obama's journey, which took him to the three swing states of Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina, also held undeniable political significance. The president assailed Republicans during the speeches, and the trip was coordinated to push a weeklong outreach message to young voters, a key part of the winning Obama coalition in 2008.

"As in other administrations, we'll follow all of the rules and regulations to ensure that the committee pays for whatever is required for the president and the first lady to travel to political events," said Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager, last night in a conference call. "These are very specific rules that are similar to what Bush and Clinton and other presidents have had to do, and they're very clear and we will abide by all of those in our usual way."

Republicans have been eager to drive a message of Obama as the "campaigner-in-chief." The president's campaign is unlikely to reimburse the government for the cost of the travel, but the Republican attacks, led by Boehner, mark the beginning of an effort to engage in the general election fight against Obama.

The battle for control of Congress this fall will be more closely fought than many Republicans had predicted in the heady days following their 2010 midterm landslide victories, according to those most closely involved in the campaign.

House Speaker John Boehner’s comments this week that the GOP has a “one-in-three” chance of losing the House sent shockwaves through the political establishment. “We've got a fight on our hands and our hands need to be prepared,” Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, doubling down on his warning.

While the Ohio Republican’s admonition was mostly meant to guard against complacency among donors and lawmakers, it reflects a more grim assessment of the GOP’s chances in the House and Senate.

Richard Drew / AP

House Speaker John Boehner's comments this week that the GOP has a "one-in-three" chance of losing the House sent shockwaves through the political establishment.

Republicans now privately expect to suffer a handful of losses in the House, expected partly to be a natural outgrowth of the receding Republican wave from 2010. And while the party remains optimistic in its chance to regain the Senate, Washington Republicans believe it wouldn’t be by any commanding margin.

"This is going to be an election that comes down to jobs, the economy and pocketbook issues. This is going to be a referendum on the president’s economic policies and how it translates down to congressional districts," said Brad Dayspring, a former spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor , R-Va.,  who now works for the Young Guns Action Fund, the super PAC founded by former aides to Cantor and GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy.

"It’s going to be whether Republicans can be trusted again to govern in a responsible manner," he said.

Forty-six percent of registered voters in April's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll said they would prefer a Democratic Congress as the outcome of this fall's elections, versus 44 percent who said they’d prefer a Republican one. That's a closer margin for Republicans than in previous months, but general anti-incumbent fervor is running high, too.

“Fairly or unfairly, House Republicans have become the face of Congress, and right now a root canal is more popular than Congress,” said Doug Thornell, a former aide on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Gone is the optimism from Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, the Republican in charge of his party’s campaign efforts in the House, from early 2011, when he predicted an expanded majority in November’s elections.

One Republican veteran of the party’s past campaign efforts pointed to two moments from the intervening 15 months that tarnished the party’s brand: the impasses associated with raising the debt ceiling and extending an expiring payroll tax cut.

"I don’t think that Republicans have had the opportunity to showcase what they are capable of doing; it’s hard to do with only one house in Congress," said the Republican. "But when they did have opportunities, they didn’t necessarily make the most of them."

The GOP entered the 2012 cycle with some built-in advantages. Down-ballot victories in 2010 helped the party shore up some seats through Census-mandated redistricting efforts, and Democrats must defend more seats (23) than Republicans in the Senate.

But Democrats argue that they have made inroads over the past year in recruiting top-flight candidates and defining Republicans, especially in reference to the controversial GOP budget in 2011.

"Nobody would have thought after we lost 63 seats in the House that we would fast-forward 18 months that we would have the candidates we have on 'Red to Blue,'" said one House Democratic campaign operative, referring to the party's initiative to flip Republican seats in November.

Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, pegged the odds of retaking the House even higher. "I think it's 50-50," he told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

To accomplish that feat, Democrats must win a net of 25 seats to retake control of the House. (Republicans caution that, because they expect to win at least a few seats, their opponents must win 35-40 seats to have a real chance of re-taking the House.)

By contrast, Republicans need a net gain of just four seats to win back the Senate.

Republicans are eager to stress the plethora of opportunities that could allow the party to accomplish its goal of winning the upper chamber. But they caution that the early projections last year that saw the GOP as competitive in over a dozen races were irrationally exuberant.

"The expectations were out of whack a year ago, and conversely, people's perspectives were out of whack, too," said one GOP strategist familiar with the party's campaign efforts in the upper chamber.

Republican candidates have struggled to get traction in states like Michigan, and few good GOP candidates have emerged in battlegrounds like Florida, Ohio, or Pennsylvania — despite potentially vulnerable Democrats facing re-election this fall.

"I think that after 2012, people will look back and see there were missed opportunities not only in 2012 but in 2010, as well," said the veteran GOP operative of the party's campaign efforts, alluding to the instances last cycle in which Tea Party-affiliated candidates failed in winning competitive races.

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe's decision to retire complicated Republicans' efforts to stymie losses, and Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown's re-election campaign is a virtual toss-up.

“We were not handed a friendly map at the beginning of this cycle but we went out and aggressively recruited great candidates in open and Republican-held seats, our incumbents built strong campaigns, and we are now more bullish than ever about keeping the majority,” said Matt Canter, the spokesman for Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

At the same time, though, Republicans point out they could still lose a number of contests and still wrest the majority from Democrats if they're able to score victories in places like Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and Montana — states traditionally friendly to Republicans.

For all of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney's talk of shrinking the size of government and repealing the president's health reform law, much of it depends on whether the GOP can retain control of the House and win back the Senate. On the flip side, Republican control of one or both chambers could also grind to a halt President Barack Obama's attempt to restructure taxes in a manner that shifts more burden to the wealthy.

To that end, both parties expect the presidential race to affect these downballot races. The Obama campaign's sophisticated turnout efforts in states like Virginia, Nevada and Ohio — to name a few — could help propel Democrats' House and Senate candidates to a margin of victory.

In the same manner, Boehner's admonition this week focused partly on minimizing losses in so-called "orphan" states and districts, where the presidential race isn't being fought tightly. The GOP made gains in three such states — New York, Illinois and California — last cycle, and their ability to keep control of the House might hinge in part on their effectiveness of holding onto some of those seats.

Another major variable involves the full advent of super PACs, the unlimited campaign funds on both sides which can spend millions to pummel candidates whom they oppose. American Crossroads and its non-profit arm, Crossroads GPS, spent with great effectiveness in 2010, and have already gone on the attack in 2012, most recently announcing a $1.2 million blitz against five Democratic Senate candidates.

“My biggest fear at both the House level and the presidential level is all of these outside groups coming in and spending tons of money,” Thornell said. “There are clearly now more of them, and they’re going to have millions of dollars. That’s going to be a huge challenge.”

When the Romney campaign released its March fundraising numbers, it noted that "84% of all donations received through the end of March were $250 or less" -- which seemed to suggest that a sizable amount of its money is coming from grassroots donors.

But that statistic doesn't tell the whole story. Per MSNBC's Joshua Chaffee, a producer with "NOW with Alex Wagner":

While the percentage the campaign cites is correct, it doesn't illustrate the role small donors play in the campaign's overall fundraising. A closer look at the numbers reveals that in fact, a majority of Romney's money has come from people who donated the maximum amount of $2,500 -- 64% through March, according to the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI).

What the "84%" figure really means is that roughly 8 out of 10 checks received by the Romney campaign were $250 or less, not that 84% of the campaign's total fundraising came from checks of that size.

More:

We had the CFI crunch the numbers for $250 and they found just 11% of Romney's cash has come from contributions of $250 or less. When you compare this to his rival, the CFI found 49% of the President's fundraising has come from donors who gave $250 or less.

A Daily Rundown panel discusses courting the Latino vote for the 2012 election and give their shameless plugs. 

Obama maintains map edge in latest NBC News battleground map… Breaking down our seven toss-up states: CO, FL, NV, NC, OH, PA, and VA… Given those toss-ups, it’s not surprising that Obama is kicking off his re-election bid with rallies in OH and VA on May 5… Biden to draw contrasts with Romney in foreign-policy speech at 10:30 am ET… Romney camp to respond in 9:30 am ET conference call… Could SCOTUS upholding Arizona’s immigration law fire up Latinos?... And Scott Walker has a significant ad-spending advantage in Wisconsin.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

President Barack Obama greets people as he arrives in an overflow before he speaks at the University of Iowa, Wednesday, April 25, 2012, in Iowa City, Iowa.

*** Obama maintains map edge: In our latest look at the 2012 presidential battleground map and the first since Mitt Romney became the presumptive GOP nominee, President Obama continues -- and has slightly added to -- his electoral-vote lead. There are 231 electoral votes in the Democratic column (either in the solid, likely, or lean categories), and there are 197 on the Republican side; 110 electoral votes are toss-up. In our previous NBC News map, which we released in late February, the Democratic advantage was 227-197. The only changes from February until now were that we moved New Hampshire from toss-up to Lean Dem; we moved Indiana from Likely GOP to Lean GOP; and we moved Georgia from Lean GOP to Likely GOP. Here’s our map:

Solid Dem (no chance at flip): DC, DE, HI, ME (3 EVs) MD, MA, NY, RI, VT (70 electoral votes)
Likely Dem (takes a landslide to flip): CA, CT, IL, WA (94)
Lean Dem: ME (1 EV) MN, NH, NJ, NM, OR, MI, WI (67)
Toss-up: CO, FL, NV, NC, OH, PA, VA (110)
Lean GOP: AZ, IN, IA, MO, (38)
Likely GOP (takes a landslide to flip): AL, AR, GA, LA, MS, MT, NE (1 EV), ND, SC, SD, TX (102)
Solid GOP (no chance at flip): AK, ID, KS, KY, NE (4 EVs) OK, TN, UT, WV, WY (57)

*** Breaking down the seven toss-up states: As you see above, we have seven states in the toss-up category: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. And if we were to push some of these states -- based on polling, past performance, and what we’ve heard from the campaigns/parties -- we’d give a slight edge to Obama in Colorado and Pennsylvania, and we’d give a slight edge to Romney in North Carolina. And that leaves us with four pure toss-ups: Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia. One other point here: There aren’t enough toss-ups in the Midwest for Romney. He HAS to put Michigan and Wisconsin into play to put map pressure on Obama, especially if the GOP’s Hispanic problem continues to make the Western swing states uphill climbs.  

*** Obama to hold upcoming rallies in OH, VA: Given our pure toss-ups, it’s probably no surprise that Obama is kicking off his re-election campaign with rallies in two of our four pure toss-up states: Ohio and Virginia. Last night, the Obama camp announced that -- on Saturday, May 5 -- the president and first lady will attend campaign rallies in Columbus, OH and Richmond, VA, which happen to be swing areas in those two battleground states. “For the better part of the last year, Romney’s tried to tear down President Obama with a dishonest, negative campaign that even his Republicans have criticized,” Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina said on a conference call announcing these two rallies. “Well, the monologue is over. Now Romney has to put his record and his agenda up against the president’s and we look forward to that debate.”

*** Biden to draw contrasts with Romney on foreign policy: In the latest of his campaign speeches drawing distinctions with Romney and the GOP, Vice President Joe Biden will deliver an address on foreign policy at New York University at 10:30 am ET. “President Obama ended the war in Iraq responsibly.  He set a clear strategy and end date for the war in Afghanistan. He cut in half the number of Americans serving in harm’s way. He decimated Al Qaeda’s senior leadership. He repaired our alliances and restored America’s standing in the world. And he saved our economy from collapse with bold decisions,” Biden is expected to say, per released excerpts. But he'll add, "Gov. Romney’s national security policy would return us to the past we have worked so hard to move beyond... But Americans know that we cannot afford to go back to the future.  Back to a foreign policy that would have America go it alone… shout to the world you’re either with us or against us… lash out first and ask the hard questions later, if at all… isolate America instead of our enemies." The Romney camp is holding a conference at 9:30 am ET to pre-but Biden’s speech.

*** Could SCOTUS upholding the Arizona law fire up Latinos? As NBC's Pete Williams reported yesterday, a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices appear to be prepared to uphold part of Arizona's controversial immigration law -- based on their comments during Wednesday morning's oral arguments. Here’s a question we have: If you’re Mitt Romney, aren’t you secretly rooting for the court to overturn the law? Just like with the health-care law, it’s hard to predict how the ultimate Supreme Court decision will play out in November. But you COULD make the case that the court upholding the Arizona law would fire up Latinos in a big way. Just something to keep an eye on... It’s the same theory many strategists believe will drive the political reaction to the Supreme Court’s health-care ruling: that if the law is upheld, it fires up conservatives in a bigger way and forces health care back into the debate.

*** Team Walker’s big ad-spending advantage: Less than two weeks from now, Wisconsin voters will head to the polls to participate in the first round of Wisconsin’s gubernatorial recall – the May 8 primary. The marquee contest here is on the Democratic side between Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (whom Gov. Scott Walker defeated in 2010) and Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk; Walker also has a minor primary opponent. Then, just four weeks later on June 5, Walker and the Barrett-Falk winner will face off for the big prize. A late March NBC/Marist poll showed 46% supporting Walker in the recall, while 48% supporting the eventual Democratic nominee. Walker’s approval rating in the poll was 48%-48%. Yet Walker and his allies (like the Republican Governors Association) have a HUGE ad-spending edge over Dem candidates and affiliated groups, $10.6 million to $4.5 million. And this advantage raises this question: Is that going to help push Walker over the top in this recall? Or does it mean that Walker can’t go any higher and that Dems could impact the race if they get close to parity? “There has been no parity on television, and we're going to be up on television,” one Dem strategist tells NBC. But here’s the GOP counter to that: Everyone has already made up their minds about Walker, and the ads that can make a difference are the others hitting Barrett or Falk.

*** The ad-spending numbers in Wisconsin: Here’s the total ad spending from November (when Walker began his ads) through April 25, according to Smart Media: 

Walker: $7.2 million
Right Direction for WI (RGA): $3.4 million
WI for Falk (union-affiliated effort): $2.4 million
Greater WI Committee (anti-Walker, DGA has contributed): $1.1 million
Barrett: $634,000
Falk: $342,000

*** Gregory interviews Sudeikis and Armisen: In his weekly “Press Pass” video, NBC’s David Gregory sits down with the two comedians who play, respectively, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama on “Saturday Night Live”: Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen.

Countdown to Election Day: 195 days

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Carolyn Kaster / AP

President Barack Obama speaks at the University of Iowa, Wednesday, April 25, 2012, in Iowa City, Iowa.

President Barack Obama flies Air Force One when he leaves town. So does Candidate Barack Obama.

Either way, taxpayers are on the hook for a hefty amount.

The souped-up Boeing 747 that typically serves as Air Force One costs $179,750 an hour to operate, according to the latest Pentagon calculations, meaning that expenses for presidential travel mount quickly.

And, no matter what the reason for the president's trip, there are all sorts of other necessary big expenses anytime he moves around the country: advance teams, cargo planes, armored cars, Secret Service protection, communications and medical staff and more.

Presidents always are quick to stress that they reimburse the government for the costs of their political travel.

That's true, but they do so under rules that still leave taxpayers paying most of the tab.

For political trips benefiting his own campaign, Obama's team repays the government for air travel under a formula that's based on what it would cost to charter a Boeing 737 for a comparable trip, according to the White House. Obama's campaign doesn't have to pay the full cost for a chartered plane, though. It pays a reduced amount based on the number of people aboard Air Force One who were traveling for political reasons. That number excludes Secret Service agents and other support staff who always travel with the president.

Obama's political team also pays for items on the ground like food and lodging that are related to political events. Similar reimbursement rules govern political travel by the vice president and first lady, who fly on smaller, less costly military aircraft.

Despite the high costs to taxpayers, "these White Houses aren't doing anything wrong," says Brendan Doherty, an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who's written a forthcoming book on presidential campaigning.

If a president had to pay the true costs of his campaign travel, says Doherty, he'd never go anywhere for political purposes.

Obama is the first president to pay for re-election travel under updated rules adopted by the Federal Election Commission in 2009 to implement a lobbying and ethics reform law passed by Congress in 2007.

David Mason, a former FEC chairman, said the new rules — linking reimbursement amounts to charter air rates rather than commercial airfare — require the Obama campaign to pay significantly more than it would have under the old rules.

When President George W. Bush was running for re-election in 2004, his campaign and the Republican Party reimbursed the White House more than $1.3 million for "airlift operations," an Associated Press review of federal data shows. Those include itemized expenses for "in-flight services," like food and catering, and the president's helicopter, Marine One.

With the 2012 general election more than six months away, Obama already has exceeded that amount. Since late 2010, a separate Democratic Party "travel offset" account has paid roughly $1.5 million for similar expenses, according to FEC reports. And there can be considerable lag time between when political travel occurs and when reimbursements show up in campaign filings, so more payments are sure to be in the pipeline.

Even under the new rules, taxpayers end up paying a large share of the overall political travel costs for Obama, Mason said. He added that "it ought to be that way," because of all the special costs related to presidential travel, including security and communications.

"Frankly, there are big advantages to being the incumbent candidate which I don't think there's a way to compensate for fully in the campaign finance regulations," he said.

Since this is an election year, the party that's out of power inevitably is sniping about taxpayer-subsidized political travel by the incumbent.

When Obama headed to Florida earlier this month for three private fundraisers and a half-hour "official" speech about tax fairness at Florida Atlantic University, for example, Republicans complained that he'd squeezed the school event into his schedule to help defray political costs.

But FEC rules specify that when there is any political activity at a particular stop, all travel to that destination must be reimbursed.

When a presidential trip includes multiple stops, some of them for political events and some for official purposes, then travel costs get divided up between the campaign and the government. But following a decades-old White House tradition, Obama aides declined to share details on how that's done.

Asked about Obama's reimbursements, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the administration follows all federal rules governing reimbursements.

Meredith McGehee, policy director of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said the lack of transparency about how costs are divided up is troubling.

"It's a pretty murky business," she said. "Is the campaign paying its fair share? The answer is, we don't know."

Ari Fleischer, who was Bush's White House press secretary, said presidents of both parties need leeway "to do normal things," and that includes campaigning. They don't have the option of traveling commercial or charter airlines, or losing the security and support entourage that always travels with a president.

But Fleischer said Obama seems to cross a line by striking an overtly political tone at non-campaign events, such as a recent speech in Florida on tax fairness and the so-called Buffett Rule, in which the president criticized the economic policies of some "members of Congress and some people who are running for a certain office right now, who shall not be named."

Political rhetoric is in the ear of the beholder, however.

"I don't think the president is doing anything that is out of the norm," says Michael Feldman, who worked in the Clinton White House. "When he's talking about the Buffett Rule, he is campaigning for a piece of legislation and an administration priority in his capacity as president."

The Republican National Committee on Thursday requested a Government Accountability Office investigation into what it said were campaign stops being passed off as "official events."

Every recent president has faced finger-pointing over taxpayer-subsidized travel.

While the president's ability to swoop in to political events on Air Force One is a huge advantage — and a bargain — for his campaign in many respects, it does come with a downside: It's far easier for a challenger to hopscotch the country on a smaller plane and to quickly change plans as political dynamics shift. The high per-hour cost of Air Force One, for example, includes charges for fuel, supplies and short- and long-term maintenance for a plane unlike any other.

The cost breakdown for trips that involve a mix of political and official stops is particularly complex. And both Obama and his predecessor tended to mingle their fundraising with official travel, according to information compiled by CBS News' Mark Knoller, who tracks presidential travel.

From the day he filed for re-election through April 9, Obama had taken 58 domestic trips, including 23 that involved political fundraising. Seventeen of those fundraising trips also included official events.

Whether a presidential event should be considered official or political is an unending source of controversy.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, who studied presidential travel for the Brookings Institution, said it's difficult to draw a clear division.

"The office is inherently political," she said. "I'm not sure how you would ever separate the political from the presidential."

As he traveled to three swing states this week to talk about student loan costs, President Barack Obama has been turning the words of Republican members of Congress against them in order to underscore, as the president characterizes it, their indifference to the struggles of college students.

Tuesday, Obama paraphrased Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-NC, who said in a radio interview that she has “very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that.”

She went on to say, “I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ You don’t just sit on your butt and have it dumped in your lap.”

Speaking at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the president said he would quote Foxx’s remarks, “because I know you guys will think I'm making it up.”

“She said she had ‘very little tolerance for people who tell me they graduate with debt because there's no reason for that,’” Obama said, even though he left out the amount of student debt Foxx said she did not tolerate students accumulating.

NRO’s Katrina Trinko pointed to a study by the New York Federal Reserve that showed the average outstanding student loan nationally was $23,300 and almost 95 percent of student loan borrowers owed less than $75,000, so Foxx’s remarks referred to a small number of debtors.

Obama also cited Foxx at his next speech at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

“She said, students who rack up student loan debt are just sitting on their butts, having opportunity ‘dumped in your lap.’”

“I can tell you, Michelle and I, we didn't take out loans because we were lazy,” he continued to laughter. “You didn't take out loans because you're lazy.” 

At his final speech Wednesday at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Obama quoted from Rep. Todd Akin, R-MO, who was asked during a Senate debate (he’s seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill) whether he would vote on a bill to keep student loan interest rates from increasing in July.

Akin responded, "America has got the equivalent of the stage three cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in. So, first to answer your question precisely – what the Democrats did to get rid of the private student loans and take it all over by the government was wrong. It was a lousy bill. That's why I voted no."

Obama made use of Akin’s words today, telling the Iowa students, “You've got one member of Congress who compared these student loans -- I'm not kidding here -- to a ‘stage-three cancer of socialism.’”

“Stage-three cancer? I don't know where to start. What do you mean? What are you talking about? Come on. Just when you think you've heard it all in Washington, somebody comes up with a new way to go off the deep end,” he said.

Obama’s Iowa speech came just hours before House Speaker John Boehner announced his caucus’ plan to introduce their own bill to extend the current 3.4 percent interest rate for one year to prevent it from rising to 6.8 percent.

Boehner’s office said the extension would be paid for by re-allocating college financial aid funds that were diverted by Democrats to pay for the health care law.

“In essence, they raided student aid to pay for a health care law that is making it harder for American small businesses to hire new workers – including recent college graduates,” Boehner’s office said in a statement.

In a rare bipartisan election-year success, the Senate Wednesday passed a bill to reorganize the finances of the U.S. Postal Service and stave off for at least two years the closing of hundreds of post offices and postal processing plants. The vote was 62 to 37.

The legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I –Conn., Sen. Susan Collins, R- Maine, Sen. Tom Carper, D- Del., and Sen. Scott Brown, R- Mass., would use an $11 billion refund from Federal Employee Retirement system to pay for buyouts of up to $25,000 to postal workers. If 100,000 of the Postal Service workforce of 557,000 employees were to retire, the agency would save $8 billion a year.

“This was a great day for the United States Senate,” Collins told reporters after the vote. “We showed that we could work together in a fair and open process….”

But the effort to keep the Postal Service from being forcibly downsized faces an uncertain future in the House where the leading Republican on the postal issue, House Government Reform and Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R- Calif., has offered a bill very different from the Senate's version. Issa's bill would create a task force along the lines of the Base Realignment and Closing Commission on military bases, which would get rid of redundant post offices and processing facilities.

Collins told reporters that she’d spoken to Issa Wednesday to urge him to move his version of postal reform to the House floor “as quickly as possible so that we can get to conference and produce a final bill.”

Hurt by competition from electronic bill paying and saddled with an excess of facilities even as mail volume has declined by more than 20 percent, the Postal Service suffered a $5.1 billion loss in fiscal year 2011, and did not make its $5.5 billion retiree health benefits payment to the federal government.

Congress’s fiscal watchdog, the Government Accountability Office reported last week that about 80 percent of Postal Service retail facilities are money losers, with revenue too small to cover their costs.

A leading postal workers union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, opposes the Senate bill.

"Relentless downsizing is not a strategy for success, yet the legislation adopted by the Senate targets more than 100,000 jobs and will force the Postal Service to slash services in order to pay unaffordable mandates to fund future retiree health benefits that no other agency or firm in the country faces,” said union president Fredric Rolando after the Senate vote. “This fight is far from over; the nation's letter carriers will work tirelessly to build a Postal Service that can thrive in the Internet age while serving the country we love." 

The postmaster general has agreed to a moratorium on closing any postal retail facilities until May 15 to allow Congress time to pass legislation.

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- President Obama appeared at his third "official event" in two days on Wednesday to promote extending student loan relief at an event that had the feel more of a campaign rally.

At the University of Iowa, the president voiced a message before a crowd of more than 4,000 centered on urging Congress to prevent the doubling of government-backed student loan interest rates in July.

"This is where I really need you guys, Congress needs to act right now to prevent interest rates on federal student loans from shooting up and shaking you down," Obama said to applause, imploring the students to turn up the heat on lawmakers.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

President Barack Obama speaks at the University of Iowa April 25 in Iowa City, Iowa.

But the impasse on Capitol Hill doesn't stem from a debate over whether to maintain the current interest rate, but rather, how to pay for it. Extending the current interest rate for another year will cost about $6 billion, according to a White House aide. But the White House stresses they're committed to extending the rate without adding to the deficit.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) introduced a bill on Wednesday to continue the lower interest rate, which the President said was "good news." However, the bill is financed by closing a payroll tax loophole for a certain type of business, something Republicans may not support.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was dismissive of Reid's bill, as well as the president's college tour.

"If the president was more interested in solving this problem than in hearing the sound of his own voice or the applause of college students, all he'd have to do is pick up the phone and work it out with congress. We don't want the interest rates on these loans to double in this economy," he said.

The Republican leader continued: "The only reason Democrats proposed this solution to the problem is to get Republicans to oppose it and make us cast a vote they think will make us look bad to voters they need to win in the next election."

But Obama pushed back at Congress with his own snarky rhetoric, saying that if Republicans think he's talking about student loans to distract from the economy then, "These guys don't get it. This is the economy...What economy are they talking about?"

According to the College Board, In 2010-11, 7.8 million undergraduate students took out subsidized Stafford loans to help pay for their college education. Many of them would see about $1,000 added, on average, to the cost of their loan over its lifetime if rates were to increase.

The Associated Press' Beth Fouhy, MSNBC and Bloomberg View's Jonathan Alter and the National Review's Reihan Salam discuss Mitt Romney's structured speech last night and compare it to President Barack Obama's recent speeches and appearances. 

Chris Keane / Reuters

Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at a rally on the night of the New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware primaries in Concord, North Carolina April 24, 2012.

Newt Gingrich will suspend his campaign next week, ending his pursuit of the presidency, but almost certainly not his life in the national spotlight.

NBC News learned that Gingrich will suspend his campaign on May 1, and may well endorse Mitt Romney, his nemesis throughout the primary season.

But if one thing seems unassailably true about the end of Newt Gingrich's bid for the presidency, it's that we haven't seen the end of Newt Gingrich.

The former House speaker's career has, if nothing else, been marked by its series of peaks and valleys. Gingrich ends his campaign for the Republican nomination exploring the depths of one such valley: his campaign wracked with debt, his political stature at an all-time low within the GOP, and his private business seriously threatened.

But like a cat with nine lives, throughout his career, Gingrich has shown a penchant for achieving unthinkable political resurrections. While he might have cashed in several lives during this campaign -- and had certainly spent more in his preceding political life -- it seems unthinkable that the public has seen the last of this man.

“We had an avalanche fall on us, and Newt dug himself out. And that's the story of his entire career,” said Rick Tyler, the spokesman for a pro-Gingrich super PAC. Tyler was a longtime aide to the former House speaker before having joined a mass resignation of senior staff last June -- a particular low point for the candidate and his campaign.

Those mass resignations came after a rocky rollout for Gingrich, during which he criticized a controversial budget drafted by House Republicans. Gingrich also struggled with the revelation of a six-figure line of credit he’d maintained with the jeweler Tiffany’s, and an ill-timed Greek vacation he took with his wife Callista, an omnipresent figure on the campaign trail.

His campaign was considered all but dead after June 9, 2011 -- the day of those resignations. But students of his career could just as easily draw parallels with other scenes from the Gingrich political biography, moments when it also appeared his luck had run out.

“I think there's a little bit of Richard Nixon in Newt Gingrich. His political career was pronounced dead as many times as well,” said Craig Shirley, the GOP public affairs veteran with close ties to Gingrich. Shirley, a biographer of Reagan, is currently working on a political biography of Gingrich.

“He likes the high wire in the same way that Nixon did,” Shirley said of Gingrich. “They all like the high wire, but there's some who handle it better than others.”

There are many instances when, over the last three and a half decades, Gingrich had appeared to fall out of favor with both Republicans and voters at large. There were his failed early bids for Congress in the 1970s and clashes with Republican leaders throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

His biggest political achievement came in 1994, when Gingrich led Republicans to win back a majority in the House for the first time since 1954. But his tenure was well-documented for its internal and external tumult, and led to an attempted coup toward its end. Gingrich resigned amid growing Republican anger toward his leadership following the elections of 1998 – a dramatic development used to great effect by Mitt Romney’s campaign throughout the 2012 primaries.

That resignation might have otherwise meant the end for any other political figure, but the story of Newt Gingrich has always been a story of reinvention and resurrection.

In the more than 10 years since leaving Congress, Gingrich took on the persona of a party elder. He became a commentator on FOX News, a lucrative opportunity, and made millions more through consulting and the establishment of “Newt, Inc.,” the consortium of interest groups built in his name that has pervaded Washington.

His brand had been rehabilitated sufficiently enough by 2011 to wage a credible bid for the Republican presidential nomination, but Gingrich’s campaign was marked by the same turbulence that had defined his entire career.

Gingrich soldiered on following the June resignations, only to re-emerge in late November 2011 as the top choice of Republicans in the first nominating contest in Iowa, at least according to polls. But his presidential aspirations bottomed out again after suffering an onslaught of negative advertising from the Romney campaign.

Undeterred, Gingrich rebounded again to shock Romney in the South Carolina primary – the first time a candidate had won the influential primary since its inception without continuing to become the eventual Republican nominee.

Then came the Florida primary several days later, where Romney again dispensed with the former House speaker by using a barrage of critical advertisements. It was Gingrich’s last true gasp as a candidate. He retreated to Georgia, the state he had served as a member of Congress, and hitched his candidacy to winning that state – and only – on Super Tuesday.

Even in nearby Mississippi and Alabama several weeks later, Gingrich lost those primaries to Rick Santorum. His inability to score a meaningful win fueled perceptions of Gingrich as a kind of “ghost candidate,” even though he defiantly vowed to push forward with his campaign through the August convention in Tampa, where he would conceivably challenge Romney in a messy floor fight for the nomination.

His relationship with FOX lies in tatters following the publication of a report in which Gingrich made critical comments of the network before a private crowd. More significantly, the Center for Health Transformation – the crown jewel of Gingrich’s personal empire – was forced to file for bankruptcy in the former speaker’s absence. His campaign is millions in debt, and CHT’s bankruptcy will likely cost Gingrich some personal wealth, too.

Gingrich’s path to redemption – again – is steep, possibly steeper than at any previous point in his career.

That path begins with a speech at the Tampa convention this summer meant to unify Republicans behind Romney, despite the personal animosity over time between Romney and Gingrich, said Shirley.

“Newt has the ability to arrest people because he’s interesting,” said Rick Tyler of the attributes that might help Gingrich accomplish another turnaround. “That didn’t translate into people wanting him to be president.”

Fans of the former speaker assert that it would be inconceivable for Gingrich, at the least an irrepressible gadfly in Washington, to fade from public view.

When will Americans finally see Gingrich’s final act as a public figure?

“I guess when he's getting last rites,” Shirley said.

Updated at 11:45a.m.ET: 

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano walks into a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on April 25, 2012 in Washington, DC.

There was no risk to President Barack Obama as a result of a prostitution scandal at a Colombia hotel that involved a dozen Secret Service officers, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate panel Wednesday.

Napolitano, who was facing questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee for the first time since the scandal erupted earlier this month, testified that the alleged behavior by Secret Service employees is "inexcusable" and a "thorough and full investigation is under way." She said the officers' behavior "was not part of the Secret Service way of doing business."

"All 12...have either faced personnel action or been cleared of serious misconduct," Napolitano said. "We will not allow the actions of a few to tarnish the proud legacy of the Secret Service."

Napolitano also said part of the investigation will include a review of training to see "what if anything needs to be tightened up."

When asked by committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., if Secret Service officers are specifically training on issues related to having intimate relationships with foreign nationals, she said the training is "focused on professionalism, on conduct consistent of the highest moral standards."

Napolitano also testified that the Secret Service Office of Professional Responsibility, which is investigating the incident in Cartagena, Colombia, had not received any similar complaints of misconduct in the last 2 ½ years.

The Homeland Security inspector general is also supervising the investigation and "the investigatory resources of the Secret Service," she said, adding that she expect the inspector general to do a complete investigation.

Leahy said before the hearing that he wanted to know how thorough the investigation into the misconduct has been and whether such behavior by Secret Service officers has been tolerated in the past.

 
Related: Washington delicate about Secret Service scandal 

"I think that's a very legitimate question. And I've raised it twice with the director of the Secret Service. We'll raise it again," Leahy told NBC's "Today Show."

The Secret Service announced late Tuesday that all 12 implicated officers had been dealt with: eight forced out, one stripped of his security clearance and three cleared of wrongdoing, all within two weeks of the night in question.

The scandal erupted after a fight over payment between a Colombian prostitute and a Secret Service employee spilled into the hallway of the Hotel Caribe ahead of President Barack Obama's arrival at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena. A dozen military personnel have also been implicated, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said they have had their security clearances suspended.

Obama said Tuesday the employees at the center of the scandal were not representative of the agency that protects his family in the glare of public life. "These guys are incredible. They protect me. They protect Michelle. They protect the girls. They protect our officials all around the world," the president said on NBC's "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon."

"A couple of knuckleheads shouldn't detract from what they do," Obama added. "What these guys were thinking, I don't know. That's why they're not there anymore."

Lawmakers across Congress say they are concerned about the security risk posed by the proximity the prostitutes — as many as 20, all foreign nationals — had to personnel with sensitive information on the president's plans.

"No one wants to see the president's security compromised or America embarrassed," Leahy said.

Related: 3 more Secret Service employees forced out in Colombia prostitution scandal 

Napolitano said that there was no risk to the president. Questions about the culture of the agency, she said, are still being investigated but she was not aware of this being a wider problem.

"This behavior was not part of the Secret Service way of doing business," Napolitano testified. "We are going to make sure that standards and training, if they need to be tightened up they are tightened."

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, House Speaker John Boehner said the scandal is an embarrassment to the agency and the United States, but stopped short of calling for an independent investigation.

"What I'm looking for are the facts. I don't want to just jump out there and make noise just to be making noise," Boehner told reporters. "Let's get to the bottom of this."

The Colombia scandal has been widely denounced by official Washington, but it's a delicate political matter in an election year with the presidency and congressional majorities at stake. All sides have praised Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan's swift action and thorough investigation, in part because he's spent significant time keeping key lawmakers in the loop. Pentagon officials, too, are investigating and are expected to brief Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and ranking Republican John McCain on Wednesday.

In a similar but unrelated incident, Panetta said Tuesday that three Marines on a U.S. Embassy security team and one embassy staff member were punished for allegedly pushing a prostitute out of a car in Brasilia, Brazil, last year after a dispute over payment. Panetta, speaking in Brasilia, said he had "no tolerance for that kind of conduct."

The military investigation into the Cartagena incident is continuing.

Another Senate panel is looking for a pattern of misconduct. Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told reporters on Tuesday that he'll hold hearings on the service's culture and whether clear rules exist on how employees should behave when they are off duty but on assignment.

"I want to ask questions about whether there is any other evidence of misconduct by Secret Service agents in the last five or 10 years," Lieberman said. "If so, what was done about it, could something have been done to have prevented what happened in Cartagena? And now that it has happened, what do they intend to do?" 
 

Matt York / AP file

Former U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in a January 2012 picture.

Former Congresswoman Gabrielle "Gabby" Giffords made a rare public appearance Tuesday night to accept the “We Are EMILY Award” from Emily’s List, a political advocacy organization that supports pro-choice women seeking office.

“Gabby’s unimaginable courage has been an inspiration to everyone in this room tonight,” said Emily’s List President Stephanie Schriock.

While Giffords did not personally accept the award, her mother, Gloria Giffords, accepted and spoke on her behalf. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., said Gabby’s attendance at the event was a testament of how much Emily’s list has meant to her.

Wasserman Schultz nodded at Giffords as she told the crowd, “This is an incredibly well deserved honor.”

During the presentation, Giffords smiled as she sat onstage flanked by her mother and good friend, Wasserman Schultz. Speaking before the hundreds in attendance, Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., summed up the former Congresswomen’s impact in Washington.

“She spoke out courageously and quickly distinguished herself as a shining star who embodies the best of public service,” she said noting that her time in public service was far from over.

The yearly Emily's List award is given to recognize women who have changed the face of political power and provided leadership and inspiration.

The former Congresswoman’s mom said her daughter has been a constant source of inspiration during her recovery from an assassination attempt in Jan. 2011 in which Giffords’ was shot in the head.

Giffords mom took the podium on behalf of the former congresswoman and quickly addressed her role of accepting the award for her daughter.

“Obviously the ideal situation isn’t for me to be up here accepting this award on behalf of Gabby, but life’s not perfect.”

As the former Congresswoman’s mom reached the “self-sacrifice” part of Gifford’s message during her speech, she struggled to hold back tears. Gloria spoke of her daughter’s determination, saying “she’s working tirelessly on her recovery.”

Emily's List also used the event to unvail an award named in Giffords' honor: the “Gabrielle Giffords Rising Star” award.

Emily’s List states the award will “honor women who demonstrate the sort of commitment to community, dedication to women and families and determination and civility that have been the highlights of Giffords’ career."

Gloria said the former Congresswoman is “especially touched and honored” by the award. Before leaving the podium Gloria leaned in and offered hope to the crowd on behalf of her daughter.

Giffords’ mom said she is striving for a full recovery and her future remains very bright.

“She’ll be back fighting alongside of you,” she said.