On April 25, President Obama will be united with his four living predecessors in Dallas for the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University, Time reports.

John Podhoretz: “Barack Obama is a serious man. Yes, he likes to golf, and yes, he ran a campaign with cutesy Facebook pictures and seemingly inane Flash slideshows like ‘Life of Julia.’ No, he does not seem interested in the mechanics of legislation, nor does he seem adept at negotiation. But the weird condescension his opponents display toward him is ludicrously wrongheaded. They seem eager to believe he is a lightweight, and he is not. Obama is very possibly a world-historical political figure, and until those who oppose him come to grips with this fact, they will get him wrong every time.”

President Obama “will dine with a dozen Republican senators on April 10 at a dinner organized by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA),” Roll Call reports.

“This will be the second such gathering over the course of about a month. Obama had dinner with a group of GOP senators on March 6 to talk about a wide array of issues.”

President Obama will appoint Julia Pierson, a veteran U.S. Secret Service agent, as the first female director of the agency, the Washington Post reports.

“Obama’s selection of Pierson comes after an extraordinarily difficult year at the service, and amid calls that the next director make internal changes at the agency whose masculine culture was exposed during an overseas trip last year.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Fox News that President Obama and former President George W. Bush could have “conceivably been put in jail” for using drugs.

Said Paul: “Look, the last two presidents could have conceivably been put in jail for their drug use and I really think – look what would’ve happened, it would’ve ruined their lives. They got lucky. But a lot of poor kids, particularly in the inner city, don’t get lucky and they don’t have good attorneys and they go to jail for some of these things and I think it’s a big mistake.”

The response prompted host Chris Wallace to note, “Actually, I think it would be the last three presidents, but who’s counting?”

A new Pew Research survey finds President Obama’s job approval rating has tumbled since shortly after his re-election, from 55% to 47%, “as the public’s economic expectations for the coming year have soured”

Nonetheless, Obama “retains greater public confidence than congressional Republicans in
dealing with the budget deficit: 53% express at least a fair amount of
confidence in him to handle the budget, compared with 39% who express
the same confidence in GOP leaders.”

President Obama has asked Jeff Zients to stay on as acting budget director, “a move that takes him out of the running to become trade chief,” Reuters reports.

“Zients would stay in his current role until the confirmation of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, whom Obama has nominated to lead OMB.”

President Obama “came into office four years ago skeptical of pushing the power of the White House to the limit, especially if it appeared to be circumventing Congress,” McClatchy reports.

“Now, as he launches his second term, Obama has grown more comfortable wielding power to try to move his own agenda forward, particularly when a deeply fractured, often-hostile Congress gets in his way.”

As President Obama departs for Israel tonight and Vice President Biden returns from Rome, “there will be about a 20-minute window when the nation’s two highest-ranking elected officials will not be on U.S. soil,” the Washington Post reports.

“Luckily, there is no reason to panic. This brief gap does not trigger a succession crisis, as White House officials are quick to point out.”

And Speaker John Boehner’s office “declined to comment on the fact that he might spend a quarter of an hour as the top American official on U.S. soil, or how he might take advantage of that brief home court advantage.”

A new CNN poll finds President Obama’s approval is now underwater at 47% to 50%.

“Senate Republicans have a thorny dilemma regarding President Barack Obama’s nomination of Thomas Perez as Labor secretary, especially now that the GOP apparatus has begun to redouble its efforts to reach out to minorities,” Roll Call reports.

“If Republicans block Perez, they risk undercutting the Republican National Committee’s brand-new diversity push and getting mired in fights over voting rights and immigration. But if they allow his nomination to go through, they risk blowback from their base.”

“The battle for President Obama’s library appears to have boiled down two finalists: Chicago and Hawaii,” USA Today reports.

“Universities and community groups in both places are busy
lobbying the president’s people for the facility that the contestants
see as an economic and cultural boon.”

Nate Cohn says that too much weight is given to President Obama’s approval rate sinking below the 50% threshold in recent polls.

“Falling below that mark might give the impression that the president is ‘weaker’ politically, but it hardly warrants notice. After all, the president entered his reelection campaign with similar numbers and ultimately won by a convincing margin. A larger decline in Obama’s approval ratings, to the low forties, would augur poorly for Obama’s second-term agenda, but not what we’re seeing now. The president’s legislative initiatives, including a debt deal and immigration reform, depend on cultivating organic Republican support for compromise, not the president’s ability coerce Republicans with his popularity. Even at the height of his post-election bounce, Obama’s mid-fifties approval ratings didn’t force Republicans to accept a balanced approach to reduce the debt.”

“But lower approval ratings, and the desire to raise them, could make the White House more interested in the long sought ‘grand bargain’–perhaps the only event, other than noticeably improved economic conditions, that might send the president’s approval rating back into the mid-fifties, or higher.”

“At a recent gathering of House committee and subcommittee chairmen, Republican lawmakers were asked if they could name the legislative affairs staffer at the White House responsible for staying in contact with their panel,” the AP reports.

“Not a single one could.”

“So he’s destroying this country, but yes he’s charming.”

— Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), talking about President Obama on the Laura Ingraham Show.

“The politics are going to overwhelm the policy. It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party.”

— South Carolina state Rep. Kris Crawford (R), quoted by the Charleston Regional Business Journal.

Speaker John Boehner: “So it was a good meeting. House Republicans welcomed the chance for a frank exchange of ideas with President Obama on Wednesday. Outreach is always positive, and more Republicans in this town need the opportunity to have an open dialogue with our president. I hope these discussions continue.”

“Yet, while this may have been the first time some of my colleagues have heard the president’s arguments so personally and directly, I’ve heard them all many times before. If we’re going to find bipartisan solutions, the president will have to move beyond the same proposals and Democratic dogma. For all of Washington’s focus on the president’s outreach to Republicans, it’s his engagement with members of his own party that will determine whether we succeed in dealing with the challenges facing our economy.”

President Obama admitted that Organizing for Action, the nonprofit group born from his reelection campaign, was a way to combat the pivotal “mistake” of his first term — allowing the populist enthusiasm behind his policy objectives to fade amid tough negotiations with Congress, The Hill reports.

Said Obama: “I think here in Washington, this idea has been viewed with some suspicion and people have been puzzled about what it is we’re trying to do, because the usual idea is this must be a mechanism to try to win the next election in 2014. What we’ve tried to explain to people is, no, I just actually want to govern — at least for a couple years. But I also want to make sure the voices of the people are actually heard in the debates that are going to be taking place.”