Amongst the fan-fare and media/electorate honeymoon, once aspiring state senator, and electoral promotion via opponent disqualification to US Senator, the 44th President became the last man standing in last years national election.
Following what Dick Morris cites as a LBJ inspiration, keeping political enemies closer so they’d be standing inside “pissing outside the tent” rather than in; President Obama trapped the Clintons: the former First Lady as a powerless Secretary of State and pigeon-holed the 42nd President as a special envoy to Haiti. Former also-twice-ran presidential candidate, Joe Biden became a running mate and has since moved into the Naval Observatory residence.
But in lassoing in his former rivals to hedge his bets, Mr. Obama has to constantly egg-shell walk day by day: he has a Vice President whose gaffes explode without warning, a Secretary of State that’s itching to plunge the knife into his back at the first opportunity, a Press Secretary that bungles his way through one press conference after another, going so far to tell the press core to contact the White House for an explanation of the now infamous Air Force One/NYC photo-op.
And it doesn’t end there.
His Treasury Secretary, like many of his other appointments, has a inexplicable tax problem and runs a field with overreaches on talking head programs, a House Speaker who can’t seem to keep from impeaching her own credibility, a Senate Majority Leader whose re-election prospects are waning fast, a rabid hard-left fringe base that is turning ever more angry and a European fan club that cheered him into office that won’t lend a hand other than to shake and send him on their merry way.
Aside from the personalities, there’s no end of real crisis:
The imploding American auto industry, a seemingly bottomless housing free fall, two wars, a credit calamity, uneasy suits on Wall Street, an insolvent west coast state, ever expanding unemployment and debt larger than any one can possibly count.
Not to mention, a maniacal Persian dictator just itching to start a war with our only true ally in the Middle East and a crazed half-pint NorK who likes to launch missiles as a backdrop to end-of-nuclear proliferation speeches.
