Finally, a one dollar coin honoring Andrew Johnson, one of the most overlooked U.S. presidents ever.

OK, maybe James Garfield's six months in office were more forgettable. Or Warren Harding, the first sitting senator to move down to the White House.

Until this minute, millions of Americans had no idea we needed an Andrew Johnson presidential one-dollar coin, which came out just this week.

"Beginning today," the U.S. Mint's Daniel Shaver said Thursday, "millions of Andrew Johnson Presidential $1 Coins will be released into circulation by Federal Reserve Banks across the Nation. During 2011, they will make their way into the hands and pockets of many Americans, connecting America through coins to Andrew Johnson and his Presidency."

Also countless dresser drawers.

Though popular perhaps with the vending machine industry, one dollar coins aren't seen as often as, say, quarters. But there's a reason the Mint churns them out: It can sell collectors a....

Just a quick update on America's top enemies list so you know who to be hating over the weekend: Iran.

Again.

Iran's been the top bad guy in American eyes since 2006.

A new Gallup Poll out this morning confirms the mullah-run theocracy is seen as the greatest enemy of America, with 25% saying that. All despite President Obama's ongoing attempted diplomatic outreach to Iran, so far universally rebuffed.

The second worst black hat, according to the new data, is North Korea, the isolated hermit kingdom run by Kim Jong Il, the beloved dear little fellow who turned 69 Wednesday at a birthday blowout with a bigger flag than yours.

But wait, ladies and gentlemen, we actually have a tie for second greatest enemy of America at 16%:

China, the rising economic superpower whose President Hu was just feted by Obama at a White House state dinner. Did someone check the silver after Hu left? We do owe China an awful lot of money.

With the decline of attention to U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, that country has slid down the enemies list to fifth place at 7%. 

That means it's given way to fourth place Afghanistan (9%), where some 100,000 U.S. troops are now fighting insurgents. Although Obama has promised they won't be there for long, unless they have to be, which seems likely.

Russia is the sixth-ranking enemy at 3% followed by -- wait for it -- the United States itself, which 2% of Americans see as their own worst enemy. 

There are age differences too. Older Americans pick Iran as top enemy; younger Americans list North Korea. But there's tripartisan agreement among Republicans, Democrats and independents: Iran is the baddest baddie.

Earlier this month Gallup reported that by a lopsided 52%-to-32% margin, Americans have decided that China is winning the future and become the world's leading economic power, surpassing their homeland. If only we had $53 billion more in high-speed trains.

 -- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Abedni Taherkenareh / EPA; KCNA via KNS (Kim Jong Il birthday banner bash).

The problem is familiar: A projected government deficit with nine 0's.

The appeal is somewhat familiar: Let both sides of the aisle work together for our mutual futures. "The only way we are going to succeed," he says in the full text below, "is if we work together."

The governor, however, is somewhat unusual.

John Hickenlooper was an unemployed geologist who set out to build and run his own brew pub, did so, then became mayor of Denver as his first political job, attracted his Democratic Party's National Convention in 2008 (remember those Greek columns at Obama's triumphant speech?), and then last November was elected governor of one of America's geographical gems. Hickenlooper's full bio is here.

He displays a kind of down-home humility and Western pragmatism that appears uncomfortable with partisanship outside a campaign. (Look at the photo above; Does he look like one of these imperial federales who strut around Washington?)

"Sustainable jobs," says the Democrat, "are created by the private sector." That's his top stated priority, helping job creation.

Hickenlooper suggests, for instance, that each new piece of legislation come with a kind of regulation impact statement, similar to an environmental impact statement, that would list what the bill's costs would be in terms of new red tape and money.

Unlike the head of his party in Washington, Hickenlooper says his goal is....

President Obama's done a lot of talking recently about Winning the Future. Trouble is, he's not. Politically.

At this moment -- 57% of the way through a first term with only 628 days left until the 2012 presidential election -- the Democrat can only tie any conceivable Republican candidate.

The GOP doesn't even need a frontrunner to catch the incumbent of the most powerful political office in the world. No wonder Obama's bringing fresh blood into the White House and shipping out aides to kick-start the billion-dollar campaign back in Chicago.

A new Gallup Poll finds Obama a little worse off in that generic presidential ballot category this year than he was last year at this time.

And -- this'll get the ex-state senator chewing the nicotine gum faster -- the new Gallup numbers show Obama significantly behind the same standing of his Republican predecessor,  that Texas guy who still refuses to reciprocate Obama's criticism of his two terms.

Last February Obama led a generic Republican 44-42. This February, after the invisible "Recovery Summer" and Democrats' historic midterm election shellacking, any Republican ties Obama at 45-45.

At this same calendrical point in George W. Bush's first term, the Republican led any Democrat 47-39. And Bush went on to win a second term against a Massachusetts senator who docks his yacht in Rhode Island. (Anyone remember how Bush won that year? He took the 20 electoral votes of Ohio, which explains Obama's frequent forays there.)

Gallup's numbers show Obama maintaining his voter strength among blacks. Women still prefer him more than men do.

But the youth vote, so crucial to the Democratic ticket last time, is evaporating. Going into the 2008 election Obama had 63% of the registered voters aged 18 to 34. Today, he's got only 51%. Likewise, Obama's support among 35-to-54-year-olds has crumbled from 53% in 2008 to 43% today.

Of course, a lot can change before Nov. 6, 2012. In 1984, Republican Ronald Reagan roared back from 1983 disapproval to win the largest electoral vote victory in American history over another Democratic ex-senator. But Reagan rode atop the kind of surging economy that few experts see erupting in the next 20 months.

Obama's contemporary vulnerability could also lure a surfeit of ambitious candidates into the late-starting field for the GOP nomination in Tampa, prompting an unusually divisive and expensive primary season on the right side of the political aisle. At the moment though, the would-be Republican candidates could take turns, it seems, and still tie Obama.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Jason Reed / Reuters; Larry Downing / Reuters (a happy Obama).

Many politicians think press secretary is one of the easier jobs: Just go out there and say what you've heard me saying all these weeks and months. And if the press and public don't buy it, then it's all your fault.

President Obama's new press secretary, Jay Carney, began his often daily news briefings today, about one hour's worth of parrying and thrusting with reporters who joke all friendly-like on the surface but would love for him to make a gaffe that they could rush out and tell the world about, as if it mattered.

Carney and his staff spend much of the day following the news and anticipating what the questions will be, and checking with presidential aides and cabinet offices for the appropriate answers or, more often, non-answers. Then, he goes out all jolly-like too and tries to mold the news coverage to his boss' best advantage in truth.

It is in a way even harder for Carney because he's a former news person. So he knows where the news people are going with their queries and they know that he knows where they're going and that they know where he is going with his PR answers.

As today when the news mob laughed out loud detecting Carney trying to sell something that they know he knows is unadulterated disingenuous bunk.

As you'll read in the full text below, Carney opened by announcing some local TV interviews Obama was doing today with stations in Richmond, Milwaukee and Cincinnati. There was an....

A year after calling for a global spread of Internet freedoms to match others, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the Web's effect on the recent Egyptian uprising and its potential for liberation and repression elsewhere.

"The ways that citizens and the authorities used the Internet," she told a George Washington University audience, "reflected the power of connection technologies on the one hand as an accelerant of political, social and economic change, and on the other hand as a means to stifle or extinguish that change." (Full Clinton text below.)

Her remarks were a powerful expression of American commitment to the openness of such technologies in a connected world as well as a warning about how -- even as she spoke Tuesday -- governments such as Iran were using the same tools to crush opposition. She also cited Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam as among those seeking to curb Internet freedoms.

And the secretary called for continued public discussion on a range of Internet issues to expand its use beyond the 2 billion now online. She said:

The first challenge is achieving both liberty and security. Liberty and security are often presented as equal and opposite; the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. In fact, I believe they make each other possible.

Without security, liberty is fragile. Without liberty, security is oppressive. The challenge is finding the proper measure: enough security to enable our freedoms, but not so much or so little as to endanger them.

She also addressed the WikiLeaks issue as it relates to the Internet and U.S. government.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Sec. Hillary Clinton's remarks on the Internet and freedom, as provided by the State Department

Thank you all very much and good afternoon. It is a pleasure, once again, to be back on the campus of the George Washington University, a place that I have spent quite a bit of time in all different settings over the last now nearly 20 years.

I’d like especially to thank President Knapp and Provost Lerman, because this....

According to the Obama administration, the nation is already recovering from one of the worst recessions in decades.

According to Americans, that's simply not true.

And you'll never guess which incumbent Democratic president they blame for it.

A new CBS News Poll finds that nearly six-out-of-10 Americans (57%) say that President Obama and Vice President Joe "Recovery Summer" Biden can cite positive statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research all they want.

But things ain't getting better economically where it matters.

The trouble for the president and his new VP partner next year is that in 2012 those same Americans will be voting, not the statistics. Despite a new presidential press secretary, only slightly more than a third (37%) are buying the White House's recovery line at the moment.

The new CBS survey also found that disapproval of Obama's job performance is up slightly to 41% from 39% last month. While approval of his job has sagged a tad, from 49% to 48%.

A Granite Quake

A shocking new poll out of New Hampshire finds that with only 51 weeks left before that state's scheduled early Republican presidential primary, an overwhelming majority of GOP voters have yet to decide who they like.

What in the global warming world are they waiting for -- election day?

Not one single Republican candidate has even announced and yet nearly eight-out-of-10 GOP voters there (78%) remain undecided in the WMUR-University of New Hampshire Granite State Poll.

Of those who have decided, the early favorite is former next-door Gov. Mitt Romney, who's been hanging around New Hampshire for years and generously assisting the state party financially.

Romney has 40% of the decideds (and a 73% approval rating generally) with all of the other usual Republican suspects at or below 10%.

The 2012 presidential election is barely 90 weeks away. In a hypothetical matchup, Romney scores 49-41 against Obama. The president probably remembers losing the Democratic primary there three years ago to someone named Hillary Clinton, who found her voice in the snow after finishing a disappointing third in the Iowa caucuses.

Next-door Obama won there. Ticket Trivia: Do you remember who finished second? (Answer below**)

A Prediction Built on Sand

Speaking of ancient history, Egypt is on the minds of other pollsters.

Gallup-USA Today reports that on Monday, recent developments there had caused some naive Americans to feel optimistic about the spread of democracy in the Middle East.

The survey found 47% thought the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak would prompt further growth of democracy in the region, while 44% were more realistic, saying Not.

The remaining 9% had been watching the Emmys and had No Opinion.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Larry Downing / Reuters (Romney); Associated Press, file.

**Answer: J. Edwards.

Sweeping hand gestures were the order of today as President Obama defended his budget at a news conference (full text below), reflecting widespread skepticism over the seriousness of his spending "cuts." At last, bipartisanship to believe in.

The Democrat invested 62 presidential minutes and about 8,000 chief executive words, many of them to defend his budget priorities. The first thing the nation needs to know is that President Obama is "confident." It's his new favorite phrase, supplanting "going forward."

But the Washington political community on both sides is also confident that the Democrat's immense budget is merely a placeholder for the real spending bargaining, which will come in the next two or three months over the budget and raising the debt ceiling.

Washington wonders why so many angry Americans talk back to the news on their TVs. Here's why: Federal spending the last two years has exploded. Never mind why. It has. Obama proposes cutting some of that increased spending. The result: Cuts to brag about but still more spending than before.

And for his next trick.....

One inconvenient stat cited by the sage Ed Morrissey: Obama's own debt commission proposed deficit reductions of $4 trillion (get used to that scary word) over the next decade. Obama's budget thinks $1.1 trillion is really good.

As Obama did with extending the Bush tax cuts in December, it appears....

 Another new governor. Another new female governor. Another new female Republican governor.

Along with New Mexico's Susanna Martinez and South Carolina's Nikki Haley.

Now, here's Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, the former state representative, state senator, lieutenant governor and U.S. representative, an impressive political resume that underscores the long-term importance of those 600-some new GOP members in state legislatures across the country.

They make up today's farm teams for tomorrow's party leaders, as they acquire the issue and legislative experience to handle future executive jobs. Fallin's full official bio is here. Listed in there are three increasingly common words in the national Republican lexicon: commonsense conservative values.

Her top priorities are job growth and retention, eliminating the state's $600 million projected deficit and holding the line on taxes.

"In the last election," Fallin says in her full State of the State Address text below, "the people of Oklahoma had the opportunity to speak, and they sent us a message. They told us that it’s time to get serious about controlling spending, and that the growth of government shouldn’t outpace growth in the private sector."

There is also, as there has been in other such state speeches (scroll to the bottom for....

Just a quick statistical confirmation that Republicans are more romantically involved than either those love dud Democrats or those indecisive independents.

The Clarus Poll finds that Republicans are far more excited about their love lives (44%) than members of the other party (32%) and members of no party (31%). With Republicans even being 8% more excited than the national excitement average.

And the new survey found that Southerners are expecially happy with their love lives, more so than, predictably, those fuddy-duddy northeastern Democrats.

Two shockers in the poll: Men are more excited about their love lives (42%) than are women (30%), no doubt especially Democratic women.

And, if you can believe it, money seems to play a role in sexual excitement. That ah-hah data explains why a Democrat as president is so interested in redistributing wealth.

Those with incomes above $100,000 are more "excited" about their romantic lives (47%), while only about one-in-four (27%) feel that way if they're bringing in less than $50,000 a year.

Finally, fully 20% of Americans say they do not know how they feel about their romantic lives. And we all know what that means.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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The Ticket invited Los Angeles talk-show host John Phillips to guest-blog on his impressions of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington over the weekend. The annual gathering draws conservatives from across the country, including many seen as possible presidential candidates someday.

Here's Phillips' first report right X. His second report is right here. Given reader response, here's a third piece written on the airplane transiting flyover country. We'll try to keep luring him back. Meanwhile, scroll down to see how to hear Phillips every weeknight on the radio and online:

To keep myself from indulging in a $45 Cinnabon at Dulles Airport,  I've decided to review what happened this weekend at CPAC 2011. Here are my highlights, and what we learned.

Best speech of the conference:  Ann Coulter, hands down.  She didn't have Donald Trump's drama, but then again....

As The Ticket's 58,700-plus Twitter followers here and 6,500 Facebook fans here know, we regularly share our daily picks of the late-night jokes of interest, usually before broadcast each night. Feel free to pass them on to friends using the share buttons above. Here's the regular Monday morning collection from the previous week:

Leno: In Iran, you know, it’s a crime to buy flowers for Valentine’s Day. It's too Western. As opposed to the U.S. where the crime is what they charge for roses.

Conan: The White Castle fast-food chain has been taking reservations for Valentine's Day. The perfect place to take that special lady you never want to see again.

Leno: As you know, 84-year-old Hugh Hefner is marrying his 24-year-old girlfriend, Crystal Harris. If you are buying them a gift, they're registered at Bed, Bath & Almost Gone.

Leno: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was expected to resign. But instead he announced he’s going to do rehab at home like Charlie Sheen.

Leno: Wow, this Egyptian news is big. President Hosni Mubarak didn't not want to retire. Turns out, Hosni Mubarak in ancient Egyptian means "Brett Favre."

Leno: President Mubarak is really steamed about being forced out in Egypt while the Cleveland Cavaliers coach gets to stay.

Conan: Prince William’s best friend and nightclub owner, Guy Pelly, is said to be planning a wild bachelor party. It’s gotta be weird though, stuffing money into a stripper’s bikini when every bill has a photo of your grandmother printed on it.

Leno: So Keith Olbermann has a new job with Al Gore's Current TV channel. Keith's first assignment is to find anyone who watches Current TV.

Leno: Keith Olbermann joins Al Gore’s Current....