Obama to Base Reelect Out of Chicago?

The Chicago Tribune sees it as "likely":

The White House says President Barack Obama has not made a decision on where to locate his re-election headquarters for 2012, but observers expect the campaign to return to its 2008 base: Chicago.

Such a decision would buck recent history. Every two-term president in the last 30 years — George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan — set up re-election campaign offices near the White House or in suburban Virginia.

There are at least a couple ways of viewing this. On one hand, getting outside of the Beltway bubble is exactly what team Obama needs in the next two years; it's hard to argue that the President's political team wasn't running more efficiently before the election, when it wasn't in the middle of all the banter, than it has been since inauguration. Then again, on the other hand, having a reelection campaign based 700 miles away from the White House could be a recipe for disaster, one in which the campaign to reelect the President and the West Wing advisors aren't always on the same page.

In all, though, if Barack Obama can get the logistics right, I have a feeling that this will be viewed, on the net, as a positive.