President Obama officially announced his candidacy for re-election April 4.

The president made the announcement via a video that was released on his website.

This was not a surprise. The last president to not seek re-election was Lyndon Johnson in 1968.

The Obama administration has certainly seen better days and many confident Republicans are writing him off as a one-term president.

While I think that the Republicans certainly have a shot at taking back the White House in 2012, both they and the Democrats have their work cut out for the next year and a half.

Most of the potential Republican candidates in 2012 were pretty quiet on the subject, but a few had some things to say.

Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, released a video that attacked Obama’s message, saying that it was off.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney fired off a tweet that challenged Obama on his jobs record and reminded him that there are still 14 million unemployed Americans.

It is certain that when the mud-slinging begins early to mid–2012, Republicans and Americans alike will certainly have a list of questions for Obama that he may have a hard time answering.

Just a few include his broken promise of closing Guantanamo Bay and the scaling back of the wars in the Middle East.

Even though the president has taken actions to scale back the number of troops in the region, there are still Americans being killed and it is still making headlines.

The public typically pays attention when American soldiers are being killed, even though he declared an end to major combat operations in the region.

The fact that tension is rising in Libya does not help either.

Obama has made certain to reiterate to the American people that the intervention in Libya will not be a repeat of Iraq.

Finally, the economy will be a devastating blow to the campaign.

Even though the U.S. Department of Labor reported positive job growth, there are still millions of Americans out of work and it is only improving slightly.

As so eloquently put by James Carville in the 1992 election, “It’s the economy stupid.”

Even though the Persian Gulf War was a success for former President George Bush Sr. and America was still celebrating the end of the Cold War, America was beginning to slip into recession and Americans felt that not enough was being done to fix it.

Sure enough, a Democrat took the reigns and held onto them until 2000.

The looming of the deficit default does not help either and the failure of Democrats and Republicans to compromise doesn’t make Obama look like that “purple” canidate he campaigned as in 2008.

When going into a national election, it usually helps to go on the offense and tout your record, not defend it.

Once campaign season rolls around, be sure that the presidential hopefuls, unemployed workers and Tea Party activists will have their questions and complaints ready.

The president has his work cut out for him.

I hope that he and his team are prepared or it could get ugly.