Has the next campaign already begun? Actually, the last campaign never really ended.

President Obama has pledged to leave Washington every week. On February 9, he went to Indiana. On February 10, he was in Florida. "It is good to be in Florida," he told his audience, "especially in February."

February 11 saw the president travel from the nation's capital to nearby Virginia. On February 12, he was in Illinois. After all, he still has a home in Chicago. On February 17, he was back out to Colorado, where he was nominated last summer. "It is great to be back in Denver," he said.

Does a presidential visit this early in the game make a difference?

The next day, he visited Arizona, where the mortgage crisis has hit especially hard. "I'm here today to talk about a crisis unlike we've ever known, but one that you know very well here in Mesa and throughout the Valley," Obama said.

February 27, on to North Carolina. Then on March 6, he was back on the trail to Columbus, Ohio, where he addressed critics of his recovery plan. "I ask them to come to Ohio and meet the 25 men and women who will soon be protecting the streets of Columbus because we passed this plan," Obama said at a graduation ceremony for police cadets whose jobs were saved -- at least for this year -- by the stimulus bill.

Wait a minute. What trail? Obama already won the election. But politics never actually goes away. It has been called "the permanent campaign." Books have been written about it, as long ago as the 1980s: Sidney Blumenthal's The Permanent Campaign, published in 1982, as well as The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, edited by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, published in 2000. The message is that campaigning has become an essential part of governing. A high public-approval rating gives a president more clout with Congress.

Look at the eight states Obama has visited since taking office. In 2004, seven of them -- all but Obama's home state of Illinois -- voted Republican in the presidential contest. Last year, seven of the eight voted Democratic. Six were battleground states that joined Illinois and switched from red to blue (Colorado, Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia). The holdout? Republican presidential nominee John McCain's home state of Arizona. With Arizona's fast-growing Latino vote, Democrats think it may be a target of opportunity for them in 2012 as long as McCain is not on the ballot.

Obama has been in office only two months. Is he already running for re-election? "It's a coincidence," deputy White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told The New York Times. "We'll certainly visit states of all shapes and sizes, regardless of who won." But as Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, observed, "The White House doesn't make decisions on presidential visits by chance."

Obama's re-election campaign is still more than three years away, but the 2009-10 midterm election cycle is already under way. Five of the eight states the president has visited are expected to have very competitive Senate races next year. Florida and Ohio will each have an open Senate seat because a Republican is retiring. Illinois and Colorado have appointed Democratic senators. Several states are headed toward highly competitive races for governor this year or next. That list includes Virginia, a new Democratic state with a term-limited Democratic governor.

Last week, the administration announced that five regional White House forums on health care will be held in March and April. The forums will be hosted by the governors of California, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, and Vermont. All of those states except North Carolina will be holding elections for governor next year, and several of the races look competitive (California, Michigan, and Vermont).

Does a presidential visit this early in the game make a difference? Maybe, especially for a president with a strong following that needs to remain fired up.

But other factors, such as the economy, might matter more than a presidential visit. In Florida, President Obama conceded that his political future rests on his success in turning the economy around. "I'm not going to make any excuses," he said. "If stuff hasn't worked and people don't feel like I've led the country in the right direction, then you'll have a new president."

This article appeared in the Saturday, March 14, 2009 edition of National Journal.

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