Enlarge Russell LaBounty/LAT for AP

The Faith and Freedom Coalition has gone as far as sponsoring a race car with "Register to Vote" emblazoned on the side. Reed Sorenson drove the No. 32 car during a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway on April 28 in Virginia.

Russell LaBounty/LAT for AP

The Faith and Freedom Coalition has gone as far as sponsoring a race car with "Register to Vote" emblazoned on the side. Reed Sorenson drove the No. 32 car during a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway on April 28 in Virginia.

If you're eligible to vote but aren't registered yet, watch out. They're coming to get you!

Campaigns, political parties and interest groups are all mounting massive voter registration campaigns this year to influence the outcome of the November elections.

The target is the millions of Americans — the Pew Center on the States estimates that number is 51 million — who are eligible to vote but not registered. The belief is that even a relative few of these voters could swing the election results.

The NAACP says it plans to sign up 1.5 million new voters this year and will draw on a network of black churches, sororities and fraternities to help identify unregistered African-Americans.

At recent rallies for her husband, first lady Michelle Obama has encouraged students to make sure they re-register in the fall if they move over the summer.

And the Faith and Freedom Coalition has been working the crowds at NASCAR races in an effort to sign up 2 million new social conservatives. The Atlanta-based group is even sponsoring a race car with the words "Register to Vote" on the side.

Enlarge Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Former President George W. Bush, standing with President Obama, speaks about relief efforts in Haiti in January 2010.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Former President George W. Bush, standing with President Obama, speaks about relief efforts in Haiti in January 2010.

Later this month, former President George W. Bush will make his first public visit to the White House in more than two years, reports The Dallas Morning News. He will be joined by his wife, Laura:

"[They will be] honored by President Barack Obama with the unveiling of their official portraits that will hang at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

"The White House confirmed on Friday that the Bushes are slated to revisit their Washington home of eight years on May 31 for a rare joint appearance between the current and past presidents."

The 43rd president, who has shied away from the spotlight since leaving office, was in Washington earlier this week for a "Celebration of Freedom" in which he advocated the U.S. taking a more active role in supporting democracy movements abroad. He joked, "I actually found my freedom by leaving Washington." (Watch the CBS News video.)

Bush's previous high-profile visit to the Obama White House was in January 2010. He joined Obama and another former president, Bill Clinton, in heading up a fundraising project for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Following the release of what his campaign called his first ad of the general election, Romney participated in a "tele-town hall" with supporters in the swing states where the ad is running: Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa.

Friendly questions from five participants ranged from how he'd rein in medical costs (jettison Obamacare and sell health care like shoes and food and other consumer products) to where he'd cut government spending (his list includes the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides some funding to NPR.)

Romney characterized the coming election as a "crossroads for America," and urged supporters to help him get out the vote in November - particularly seniors who may be seeing lower returns on their investments, and young, voting-age citizens who may bear the brunt of the nation's current deficit spending.

Enlarge Romney "Day One" ad

Romney "Day One" ad

Challenging an incumbent president means finding ways to narrow the stature gap between the Oval Office occupant and would-be president.

Mitt Romney's image makers attempt to do just that in what his campaign calls the first ad of the general campaign called "Day One." The ad's ostensible purpose is to show how busy the all-but-official Republican nominee would be on his first day in the Oval Office.

It sounds like he would mainly be preoccupied with actions aimed at reversing President Obama's agenda. Approve the Keystone XL pipeline, check. Recommend tax-cut legislation, check. Begin the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, check.

Obama made his own day-one promises to reverse the policies of President George W. Bush. In fact, presidential candidates have made such commitments long before the advent of YouTube.

Worth noting in the Romney ad is how it attempts to attune listeners' ears to the words "President Romney." The narrator utters those two words no less than three times. Meanwhile, the current president is referred to only as "Obama."

Here's the script:

"What would a Romney presidency be like? Day One, president Romney immediately approves the Keystone Pipeline creating thousands of jobs that Obama blocked. President Romney introduces tax cuts and reforms that reward job creators, not punish them. President Romney issues an executive order to begin replacing Obamacare with commonsense healthcare reform. That's what a Romney presidency will be like."

Enlarge Danny Johnston/AP

Arkansas Senate President Paul Bookout, a Democrat, speaks in the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Little Rock on April 5. In November, Arkansans will vote for every seat in the state Legislature.

Danny Johnston/AP

Arkansas Senate President Paul Bookout, a Democrat, speaks in the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Little Rock on April 5. In November, Arkansans will vote for every seat in the state Legislature.

President Obama's performance in next Tuesday's Arkansas primary won't be as embarrassing as what happened in West Virginia two weeks ago, when he gave up 41 percent of the vote to someone who happened to be sitting in a federal prison in Texas for embezzlement.

But it may well do more lasting damage to his party.

Obama lost Arkansas by 20 points in 2008 and has virtually no chance of carrying the state this year in the November general election. Even many Democrats, it seems, have never warmed to him.

"I don't think you can ignore race, but I would say there's a broader cultural factor that is more pertinent," says Ouachita Baptist University political scientist Hal Bass, who notes that the president differs from many in the largely rural state due to his being a "very urban, very urbane individual."

The president's weakness has created an opening for John Wolfe, a Tennessee lawyer and sometime congressional candidate, who took just 246 votes — or 0.4 percent of the total — in this year's New Hampshire primary.

If you haven't seen or heard a TED Talk, they feature interesting or provocative "ideas worth spreading," as the nonprofit's slogan goes. NPR, in fact, has recently launched a TED Radio Hour that features talks ranging from how our brains trick us to what spaghetti sauce has to do with happiness.

But one TED appearance in particular became the talk of the week after it was kept off the TED.com site for being too overtly political.

In March, a tech entrepreneur and one of the early investors in Amazon.com named Nick Hanauer gave a TED talk with an idea he thought was worth spreading — that rich people like him should be paying more in taxes because he believes middle-class consumers, not rich people, are the real job creators. (A National Journal cover story deep dives into the economics behind Hanauer's theories.)

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Joe Ricketts, whose American Film Company produced The Conspirator, arrives at the film's premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010.

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Joe Ricketts, whose American Film Company produced The Conspirator, arrives at the film's premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010.

TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts is the latest in a string of billionaires who have put their names and wallets on the line this election season.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Ricketts was considering spending $10 million on ads revisiting the controversy over President Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright.

By midday, Ricketts had backed away from that game plan, but earlier this week he paid for a big ad buy that helped propel a little-known Nebraska legislator to the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat.

Ricketts has been a behind-the-scenes funder of conservative political causes for the past few years. He founded Taxpayers Against Earmarks, a group that railed against spending on pet projects by lawmakers in 2010.

Enlarge Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright addresses the National Press Club in Washington in 2008.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright addresses the National Press Club in Washington in 2008.

Battleground states like North Carolina are where the action is when it comes to presidential contests. Thus, they are where political tactics like, say, the anti-Obama ad campaign featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, first reported by The New York Times Thursday (and now disowned by virtually everyone the Times linked to it), are most likely to be rolled out.

My colleague Liz Halloran talked with some politicos in the Tarheel State to hear what they thought of the proposed anti-Obama campaign. They included Democrat Gary Pearce who was an adviser to former Gov. Jim Hunt and Carter Wrenn, the man behind one of the most infamous Republican campaign ads in recent political history. His 1984 ad for the late longtime senator, Jesse Helms, showed a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection letter as the narrator blamed minority hiring.

Liz writes:

The political world was aflutter (atwitter?) Thursday over a report in The New York Times that strategists affiliated with a Republican superPAC planned to resurrect as a campaign issue President Obama's past affiliation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The Times provided a view of the racially tinged advertising campaign proposal, and said the strategists planned to launch the broadside during September's Democratic National Convention in North Carolina.

Updated @ 2:14 pm ET — Strategic Perception Inc., the ad firm whose principal, Fred Davis, was mentioned in a story about a proposed superPAC anti-Obama attack-ad campaign that would use Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has now issued a statement:

"The document referred to in today's New York Times story was one proposal prepared and submitted by Strategic Perception, Inc. The Ricketts family never approved it, and nothing has happened on it since the presentation. The vendors listed were as proposed, and had nothing to do with this proposal."

Updated @ 1:14 pm ET — Politico reports that billionaire conservative Joe Ricketts is seeking to distance himself from a proposed superPAC attack-ad campaign against President Obama that would have featured the president's old Chicago pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney told TownHall.com, the conservative web site, that he "repudiate(s)" the superPAC proposal.

"I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they've described. I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity — particularly for those in the middle class of America. And I think what we've seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination..."

- original post, with revisions, below -

Much attention is being paid Thursday to a New York Times story that a superPAC funded by Joe Ricketts, the conservative and superwealthy founder of brokerage TD Ameritrade and patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, has proposed an ad campaign that would use — wait for it — Rev. Jeremiah Wright against President Obama.