“If you had told me a year and a half ago that the White House would be devoting time writing on how Lord Vader could fix our economic woes, I would have just laughed loudly at you.”

— A White House staffer, quoted by Mother Jones, reacting to the online petitions received by the White House.

First Read has more on last night’s news that Obama for America is reorganizing as a tax exempt advocacy group called Organizing for Action.

“Organizing for Action will be set up as a 501c4 group, but we are told the group will have full disclosure of its donors (either monthly or quarterly); setting it up a 501c4 (as opposed to a Super PAC) makes it easier to legally coordinate with the White House. But the Obama folks are conceding a big point here: They can’t do the things they want to do (like the organizing, etc.) inside the Democratic Party. If this version of OFA is successful, we’re also told then don’t be surprised if this becomes Obama’s personal vehicle post-presidency, a la Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative.”

But as I note in The Cloakroom, if he’s not careful, the unprecedented move could end up derailing his agenda as much as advancing it.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), on of only two Native American members of Congress, said that the Washington Redskins should change its team name because it is racially offensive to the minority group, Roll Call reports.

Said Cole: “Come on. This is the 21st century. This is the capital of political correctness on the planet. It is very, very, very offensive. This isn’t like warriors or chiefs. It’s not a term of respect, and it’s needlessly offensive to a large part of our population. They just don’t happen to live around Washington, D.C.”

George Packer: “I hope Obama surprises us. I hope he throws out the kind of boilerplate that made last year’s convention speech one of the weaker ones in Charlotte. I hope that Obama the writer finds some vivid prose for the occasion; that Obama the thinker treats us like his intellectual equals, as he did in Philadelphia and Oslo; and that Obama the man allows himself the risk of deep feeling, as he did in Tucson and Newtown. Most of all, I hope Obama the politician is willing to say things that some people might not want to hear.”

A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds 51% of Americans approve of the way President Obama is doing is job with 41% disapproving.

“Mr. Obama’s job approval rating is similar to that of George W. Bush at the start of his second term, but much lower than the ratings of the previous two presidents who served eight years. (President Bill Clinton’s approval rate was 60 percent in January 1997 and Ronald Reagan’s was 62 percent in January 1985.) More than 8 in 10 Democrats approve of his job performance, 8 in 10 Republicans disapprove and independents are evenly divided.”

President Obama’s re-election campaign apparatus will relaunch this weekend as a tax-exempt group to support his second term legislative priorities, Politico reports.

The new organization will be separate from the DNC and will be headed by campaign manager Jim Messina.

Los Angeles Times: “If it is able to sustain the passion that propelled Obama twice into
the White House, the pro-Obama group may outstrip the role played by
traditional interest groups, from organized labor to the environmental
movement, and could form an independent power base outside the White
House and the Democratic Party.”

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds 52% of Americans approve of President Obama’s overall job performance.

They also mostly agree with his agenda:

“Fifty-six percent believe that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be stricter, compared with a combined 42% who want them less strict or kept the same… Also, for the first time in the poll, a majority of Americans — 52% — favor allowing illegal immigrants who hold jobs to apply for legal status in this country.”

“And in the latest fiscal fight in Washington, more respondents say they would blame congressional Republicans (45%) than Obama and congressional Democrats (33%) if the nation’s debt limit isn’t raised and the country is unable to meet its obligations.”