and have been a reporter and writer here for quite some time and have interviewed Judd Gregg and watched his career unfold and I was dumbfounded that Obama would have selected him for anything. When Gregg was governor here he was a disaster and left this state with one of the few remaining electric utility monopolies in the country. As a senator, Gregg has fought against even the interests of his own state as well as against those of veterans while bringing home rediculous amounts of pork to sustain his corporate donors in Manchester, Bedford, and Hollis. In addition, he was one of G. Bush's closest advisers. That alone should have pointed to his partisanship and incompetence.

But no. The selection was made anyway and it is no surprise with how it turned out.

Obama needs to make a choice and make it very quickly. Does he want to work for the people of this country by doing what it takes to enact legislation and policy that works and is effective. Or does he want to try and be the "Why can't we all just get along?" president. The system as it is is bipartisan--everyone can vote for candidates and those candidates can fight to influence legislation. Outcomes, though, are rarely bipartisan in this day and age because Republicans are so craven that they would sell us down the river in order to stick their thumb in Obama's eye.

Bill Clinton in '93 tried being bipartisan and he was embarrassed by it in much the same manner as Obama. The only notable exception was his second defense secretary, which notably was a former Maine senator. Clinton got smart and fought back because he had a real agenda he wanted to act on. The result is that he was an exceedingly successful president, but has carried this idiotic burden of being "divisive" that the media has taken from conservative Republican detractors.

Obama owes Clinton (both of them) apologies for attacking his presidency and then needs to ask Clinton's advice for how to handle the current situation or risk being burdened, as Clinton was, by a disastrous midterm election. I can feel it and see it coming as the Republicans are working on the next contract with America and Obama and the rest of us better be ready to fight back.

It was only a matter of time. Obama is showing how naive he truly is with the whole bipartisan thing. It was merely a matter of time before he responded to Republican attacks and then labeled as being a false mesiah on bipartisanship.

And it's his fault. He defined bipartisanship as getting along rather than creating a non partisan process that may or may not lead to nonpartisan outcomes.

I hope the learning curve is very quick because Republicans have no shame and will destroy this country rather see Obama succeed.

Obama was a liberal then you obviously didn't do your homework during the primary. Between him and Hillary, Hillary was more aggressive and left of center in her policy proposals than Obama.

But you went for inspiration and saoring rhetoric and are getting a middle to right of center president. Too bad.

Finally someone is drawing the connection between the 1 million pound elephant in the room--health isurance--and its unbelievably detrimental effect on people and business. The right wing pretends to care about people and to understand business, but utterly fails on both because they are the stupidist most self absorbed jerks on the planet!

We are killing ourselves (figuratively and literally) by not having universal and portable health coverage. And the main problem is that our current system leaves us with sub-par health care and extraordinary expense that sucks everything else up.

Ask yourselves, if our system os so damn good, why aren't their huge to massive popular movements in countries with universal and portable systems to do health coverage our way?

The answer is because they may want their systems improved, not the bottom to fall out.

If you thought Obama was running as a progressive and would govern as a liberal and/or progressive, well you simply weren't paying any attention and got fooled by his rhetoric.

As a centrist Democratc I knew the only difference between him and Hillary was experience, but as far as their centrism, Obama is far more conservative.

So far I like what Obama is doing because he isn't playing ideological politics. He is being smart and pragmatic and wants solutions. If you want ideology you should have voted for Nader.

You are absolutely correct. I am always amazed at how easy it was for Democrats to turn on Clinton and call his presidency a failure and now attack HC as the ultimate insider.

What is the difference between these people and Joe Lieberman? If Lieberman should be cast out so should all the Dems who supported Obama's contention that BC's presidency was a failure and that HC is a snide, power hungry B**ch.

It seems that Democrats turning on other Democrats leads to pretty big rewards.

My answer, though, respect BC and HC's many accomplishments and the fact that they have consistently taken the right wing on (ergo the constant vitriol against them) and send JL out for not playing with his own team.