The Oval: Tracking the Obama presidency

Obama tries to calm viewers about gas prices, jobs

President Obama conducted television interviews with four local stations Tuesday, and the questions were almost always the same:

• What are you going to do about gas prices?
• What are you going to do about jobs?
• What are you going to do about the growing national debt?
• And this from a viewer in Michigan, relayed by Detroit's WXYZ-TV news anchor Stephen Clark: Why have you let us down?

Obama's answer in most cases was a variation of: I feel your pain, there's no silver bullet, but we're making progress.

On gas prices, he cited his letter to congressional leaders urging that they strip $4 billion in tax breaks from the oil and gas industries and put it toward developing clean energy alternatives. He also cited efforts to boost U.S. oil production and urge foreign oil producers to increase supplies or risk crippling the world economy.

"It's in their interests that higher oil prices aren't hurting the world economy, becasue if we're not growing, they're not going to be making money, either," Obama told WTKR-TV in Hampton Roads, Va.

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See photos of: Barack Obama

Obama's birth certificate issue won't go away

White House spokesman Jay Carney says it is "unfortunate" that the news media and some political candidates continue to dredge up the long-settled issue of where President Obama was born. He says most Americans would be "appalled" to find that this issue is still being discussed in the West Wing of the White House.

At today's news briefing, Carney was asked about the persistent claims from potential Republican presidential contender Donald Trump that the president is hiding something about where he was born.

"It is unfortunate that, for whatever reason, that instead of focusing on our economy, on our continued joblessness in this country, on the need to reduce our deficits and get our fiscal house in order, on the need for ... an energy policy and for investments in clean energy technology, on the need for an education reform strategy that positions our children for the 21st century ... that this is the subject ... to get any kind of serious attention," Carney said.

He went on to call the issue of Obama's birth, which dogged him during the 2008 presidential campaign, a "settled issue."

"The birth certificate that the campaign put up online has been available for everyone to see around the globe," Carney said. "It's the same birth certificate you get to get a driver's license. Anybody who was born in Hawaii who asks for their birth certificate gets the same thing that we, that the campaign and the White House has provided to the press."

Any suggestion that the 49-year-old president wasn't born in Hawaii is "an unfortunate distraction from the issues that I think most Americans care about. I think that anybody who is watching this exchange in the West Wing of the White House would be appalled, and most Americans would be appalled, that this is what concerns us here, when, in fact, there are so many major issues that are facing this country that need to be addressed by the president and by the Congress."

See photos of: Barack Obama, Donald Trump

Obama to congressional leaders: End oil subsidies

Updated at 4 p.m. ET

Republican leaders are unconvinced; Democrats back Obama's call. This just in from Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky:

The President's latest call to raise taxes on U.S. energy is as predictable as it is counterproductive. If someone in the administration can show me that raising taxes on American energy production will lower gas prices and create jobs, then I will gladly take a look. But since nobody can, and the President's letter to Congress today doesn't, this is merely an attempt to deflect from the policies of the past two years. Instead of returning again and again to tax hikes that increase consumers; costs, the administration and its Democrat allies in Congress should open their eyes to the vast energy resources we have right here at home and to the hundreds of thousands of jobs that opening them up could create. If the President were truly serious about lowering the price of gas at the pump, he would open these areas to development, stop penalizing American job creation with new fees and tax hikes, and call an end to the anti-energy crusade at the Environmental Protection Agency.

And this from Rep. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee:

"I am pleased that Speaker Boehner has indicated that Big Oil is going to pay its fair share in taxes. We need an equitable tax system. As part of this, repealing the three largest tax breaks for the Big Five oil companies; which together recorded profits of $77 billion last year alone ; would raise over $3 billion a year. More than a billion dollars a year of that comes from one tax break ; a domestic manufacturing incentive ; enacted under the last Republican Majority that should have never benefited the Big Five in the first place."

President Obama pounced Tuesday on comments from Republican House Speaker John Boehner that he was open to ending tax subsidies for oil and gas companies.

The president wasted no time writing Boehner and other top congressional leaders, urging that they agree to do away with the subsidies immediately and invest the new tax revenue in clean energy sources.

"I was heartened that Speaker Boehner yesterday expressed openness to eliminating these tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry," Obama said in his letter to Boehner and fellow congressional leaders Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. "Our political system has for too long avoided and ignored this important step, and I hope we can come together in a bipartisan manner to get it done."

On Monday, Boehner told ABC's Jonathan Karl that he is willing to "take a look" at subsidies paid to oil companies but wants to "see all the facts first."

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See photos of: Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charles Schumer

Gibbs: American people too smart for Trump

Former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs is on the speaking circuit these days, talking up his former boss, President Obama, and talking down potential Republican challenger Donald Trump.

"The American people are smarter than the candidacy that (Trump) is offering," Gibbs told a crowd last night at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.

Gibbs took aim at Trump's suggestions that Obama was not born in Hawaii.

"If he thinks he can build a campaign on the president's birth certificate, I don't think he will be hired by the American people," Gibbs said. "In the end, I don't think he runs."

Gibbs -- who may be a consultant to Obama's 2012 campaign -- said he's surprised at the slow-starting Republican campaign. He cast Mitt Romney as the front-runner for the GOP nomination and said Mike Huckabee could be a tough opponent.

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See photos of: Barack Obama, Donald Trump

Death of a big Obama influence: The inventor of the teleprompter

President Obama and some of his predecessors should pause today and honor a man who made their jobs easier.

Hubert J. "Hub" Schlafly Jr., the inventor of the teleprompter, has passed away at age 91.

Schlafly, an engineer in the then-fledgling television industry, developed the device that scrolls a prepared text through a machine.

The teleprompter made its debut in 1950 to help actors in soap operas recall their lines.

Schlafly and partners started a company called TelePrompTer.

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Boehner to Obama: 'Grow up and get serious' about debt

House Speaker John Boehner had some rather unkind words for President Obama yesterday -- "grow up" -- but he also said he wants to work with him to reduce the nation's $14 trillion-plus federal debt.

Obama "took exactly none of his own deficit reduction commission's ideas," Boehner told ABC News. "Not one. Come on! It's time to grow up and get serious about the problems that face our country."

That said, Boehner said he gets along with Obama "fine."

"I wouldn't say we're close friends," Boehner said. "But we're polite. We get along fine. We look each other in the eye, and we're straight and honest with each other."

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See photos of: Barack Obama, Joe Biden

Obama's day: Local TV, Middle East diplomacy

Good morning from The Oval. On this day in 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident took place at the Chernobyl plant in the old Soviet Union.

It's a full day for President Obama, who will spend part of it doing interviews with television stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit and Hampton Roads, Va. Obama's plan is to stress efforts to cut the federal debt, a topic on which he is taking heat from House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Later, Obama will meet with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates. Topics will include unrest in Libya, Yemen and Syria.

The president also meets today with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

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See photos of: Barack Obama, Atlanta, Detroit, Cleveland, North Korea, Robert Gates, United Arab Emirates, Libya, Moammar Gadhafi, Chernobyl

Obama takes in Willow Smith performance at egg roll

Of all the stars President Obama could have checked out during Monday's Easter Egg Roll at the White House, he chose one of the youngest: pop star Willow Smith.

The 10-year-old daughter of actor Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith performed her new hit, Whip My Hair, in midafternoon as the leader of the free world watched from the corner of the stage.

Obama no doubt needed some R&R after meeting with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan, then with Attorney General Eric Holder on criminal justice issues.

Smith joined others popular with the egg-rolling set on the South Lawn throughout the day, including Colbie Caillat, Greyson Chance, Mindless Behavior, Little Beats and DJ WillyWow.

See photos of: Barack Obama, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith

Obama's 2012 campaign: 'New, better, faster, sleeker'

President Obama's re-election campaign manager has a message for all would-be volunteers: Run the same campaign again, and he could lose the White House.

In an urgent, six-minute video appeal to supporters, Jim Messina says the 2012 campaign must be "new, better, faster and sleeker" than the 2008 version.

"In 2012, we have the opportunity to make 2008 look prehistoric," Messina says. He goes on to advocate a bigger scale, an expanded electorate and new technologies to "really reinvent this campaign."

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Obama spokesman fires back at Franklin Graham

White House spokesman Jay Carney fired back Monday at evangelist Franklin Graham for questioning whether President Obama was born in the USA.

Graham, who 10 years ago delivered the opening prayer at the first inauguration of George W. Bush, told ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour Sunday that Obama "has some issues to deal with" when it comes to proving his nationality.

"He can solve this whole birth certificate issue pretty quickly," the son of the Rev. Billy Graham said. "I was born in a hospital in Asheville, N.C., and I know that my records are there. You can probably even go and find out what room my mother was in when I was born. I don't know why he can't produce that."

What Obama has produced is his certificate of birth from the very American state of Hawaii. It says he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m. Various state officials of both parties have attested to its legitimacy and accuracy.

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See photos of: George W. Bush, Barack Obama

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