President Barack Obama on Monday opened his quest for a second White House term, calling on his supporters to reconnect after two tough years and gird for a battle to protect his crusade of change.
Obama, now a gray-haired incumbent barely recognizable from the prophet of hope who swept to power in 2008, set course for the November 2012 election, with a email to supporters and a video launching his "final campaign."
"Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign," Obama said, in a move that will allow him to begin piling up campaign cash for what could be a one billion dollar election.
Obama promised an effort that is farther reaching, more focused and more innovative than anything that had come before, and admitted that the past two years struggling reform had been perhaps tougher than many supporters hoped.
"We've also known that lasting change wouldn't come quickly or easily. It never does," Obama wrote.
"But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we've made... we also need to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest."
The video included scenes of Americans offering testimony of how their lives had changed under the president, in effect saying that the once underdog senator Obama had delivered on the change and hope he promised in 2008.
Obama's campaign logo included the famous image of a rising sun used in 2008, this time nestled in the "0" in 2012.
"I don't agree with Obama on everything, but I respect him and I trust him," one man said in the video.
Republicans chose to attack Obama Monday over his "failed leadership" on the current Washington debate on budget cuts, entitled the "Backseat Presidency."
Despite the constant crises surrounding his White House, Obama, 49, appears in reasonable shape 19 months from polling day, partly due to a Republican field which seems to lack an heir apparent.
But it is already clear that Obama, credited with running the most electric grass-roots campaign in memory in 2008, must find a new message to again woo supporters who once swooned to his "Yes We Can" oratory.
The 2008 campaign, from Obama's primary duel with glass ceiling breaker Hillary Clinton to his inauguration as America's first black president, was steeped in history -- a flavor that will be missing in 2012.
Though many of America's problems predated his presidency, Obama is now the face of his nation's slow economic rebound and diminished clout abroad.
But there was a ray of hope for the president last week -- a dip in the unemployment rate to 8.8 percent suggested the economy -- which is almost always crucial in US elections -- is speeding up.
Obama will also brandish a record as a genuine reformer, after passing a historic health care law and a bill curtailing Wall Street excess, allowing him to argue he delivered the change he promised.
He will say he has restored the US image abroad and charted a path through a testing world.
But the health care law remains divisive, and Obama has fallen short of other lofty goals, including his bid to close the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
Polls show Obama's approval rating in the high 40 percent region, hardly a stellar endorsement from voters but still viable considering the tough times.
Compared with a generic Republican and in individual match-ups, Obama runs strongly in many polls of possible opponents.
But Republicans are already slamming Obama's response to crises in Libya and the wider Middle East, which they say show him as a weak leader with a fuzzy foreign policy -- a critique playing into their narrative of American decline.
An uptick in American bloodshed in the decade-long war in Afghanistan could also shake up the political scene.
But the president is on course to declare in December that his core 2008 promise -- to end the Iraq war -- has been honored with all US troops due home.
Democrats take solace in the fact that there are also questions about Obama's eventual opponent, in a Republican Party dragged right of the crucial political center ground by the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement.
The crop of likely candidates includes former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney -- a failed 2008 contender -- and both appear to have liabilities.
Sarah Palin has yet to tip her hand but her popularity seems sullied these days and a new female star is emerging : Representative Michele Bachmann.
Others testing the water include former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Alabama Governor Haley Barbour and folksy Mike Huckabee, who won Iowa in 2008.
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