The quoted text is from Mark Dorlester via the CitizenStrategyThinkTank@groups.barackobama.com listserve. I added the links.

An Editorial:

As a longtime "Washington Insider" observer, yesterday was, for me, the first day of the Real Barack Obama presidency I had hoped for. Here's why:

continued...

All new presidents who are inexperienced in the ways of Washington come to the Oval Office with high hopes, great staff, and not a clue as to what is about to happen to them. Barack Obama was no exception. Like Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, and Bush Jr., he - to his own great surprise but not mine - got sucked deep, deep into the Washington Vortex. (Other presidents of my adult life had spent decades in Washington, except Reagan. But Reagan's advisors were savvy, and had him as his first serious action absolutely whack the establishment with the 2x4 upside the face firing of every federal flight controller on strike ... remember?)

The Washington Vortex is the enormous sucking swirl that incrementally nudges a new president into immobilization, to the great advantage of the thousands of lobbyists and hundreds of bureaucratic power centers.

Since the inauguration ... the day after the election last year, really ... Obama has held the foolish notion that he could reason with the powers that be. In his reliance on hope, he clearly believed that, like himself, reasonable power players would bargain and arrive at reasonable deals. Over and over, he bargained with the major players. Predictably, he lost or was stalemated.

But yesterday, for the first time and in triplicate, he announced that he was in charge, like it or not. No deals. "You people work for me; I am the embodiment of the nation's political consensus; I call the shots."

One: in a truly historic move not seen since Truman fired MacArthur, Obama told the entire military establishment to "#$%* off, go back to the drawing boards, and get us the hell out of Afghanistan someday, starting NOW." The scenario culminating in yesterday's historic decision is portrayed in the 1964 motion picture Seven Days In May.

Two: "Mr. Craig (White House Counsel) - get lost. You're toast. Go home, and I don't care if you did save Clinton's butt. You've played games with the central Constitutional issues of Guantanamo and elsewhere. Bye-bye."

Three: "Mr. Holder (Attorney General) - now that Craig is gone, let's roll! The chicken public will scream, but we're going to try terrorists in serious courtrooms and using serious Constitutional procedures."

The ramifications of these decisions impacts everything from health care to Patriot reform, because all of Washington is, for the first time in the Obama presidency, on notice that Barack is in charge, and he and he alone will decide what compromises are to be made, who will make them, when, and how.

In short, President Obama has, at last, found some serious testosterone and spine, and with it, reclaimed his moral center back from the swirling, putrid Washington Vortex.

This is cause for great celebration.

Mark
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"Man’s greatness lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition." – Shirley Chisholm