Let the race for 2012 begin

WASHINGTON

Consider the holidays a short breather between political seasons, because a new one kicks off this month with even higher stakes: the race for the White House in 2012.

While that may still seem a long way off, nearly every political decision in the next 22 months will include some calculation of how it will affect who sits in the White House on Jan. 21, 2013.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod will be leaving soon to gear up President Obama's reelection effort. Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe will join the administration to help the president deal with Congress and prepare for the campaign.

Analysts are handicapping whether Obama will use his State of the Union address, likely to take place in late January, to move his administration to the center, something that many political operatives say he must do if he hopes to be reelected.

"The jury is still out on which way the president is going to go," said Greg Mueller, a GOP political strategist. "Will he continue to draw lines in the sand far to the left of the electorate, or is he going to lurch to the middle the way Clinton did to see if he can come back? The State of the Union is the kickoff of his reelection campaign."

"For a Democratic president to win, you have to move to the center," said Richard Martin, a Democratic operative from Missouri. "This country is not ready for a pure progressive."

"The hardest thing for a group of candidates is to stand out from one another," said Stephen Wayne, a Georgetown University expert on the presidency. "I think the field is just going to be pretty well packed with a lot of speculation until we have some results."

They'll have their opportunity in the spring, when the first GOP presidential debates takes place. No firm date has been set.

The presidential contest also is likely to have a major impact on how the 112th Congress operates once it takes office this week.

With an energized GOP majority in the House and an emboldened minority in the Senate, Obama and congressional Democrats are expected to have trouble building on their success in the lame-duck session, where they accomplished several long-standing goals.