In swine flu, Obama faces big domestic test

By Steve Holland - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barely 100 days in office, President Barack Obama is facing his first domestic emergency with the outbreak of swine flu and is seeing yet again how fresh challenges can erupt from the unlikeliest of places.

In the space of a month, he has had to deal with a North Korean missile launch and a hostage drama involving Somali pirates half a world away.

And now, from Mexico, comes a new flu that has killed up to 149 people south of the U.S. border but has not had the same deadly force in the United States, sickening at least 65.

If there is any clear tendency he has demonstrated in his response to all of these challenges, it is that he has responded to all of them with an abundance of caution.

He denounced the missile launch as provocative but made no sudden moves. The Somali pirate crisis played out over four days before U.S. snipers killed three pirates and freed the hostage American freighter captain.

In the case of this swine flu, Obama has walked a fine line, appearing concerned but trying not to generate panic among Americans already on edge from the weak U.S. economy.

"This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm," Obama said on Monday.

He has dispatched key officials to offer reassuring words to anxious Americans, including White House homeland security adviser John Brennan, the secretary of the Homeland Security Department, Janet Napolitano, and Richard Besser, acting director of the Centres for Disease Control.