Joseph Romm has one part of one bit of the answer to that conundrum - but only part.

What could really make Obama a great president is for him and his team to come to understand very clearly just how the things they do (or get done) from day to day will "contribute to" or "hinder" accomplishment of each other and to the US Mission. (Hopefully, they, along with enough US citizens, will define an appropriate Mission effectively. Thus far, Obama seems to be doing pretty well - but these are even before 'early days' in his tenure!) Then they need to devise effective Action Plans to get useful things done effectively and fruitless/wasteful things discarded without spending a whole lot of time or resources on them. Then this understanding must be passed on to enough US citizens to enable and ensure that things would really happen on the ground. (Not to forget: much of the rest of the world also has to be brought on board - this huge task of getting enough people on board was something entirely ignored by GW Bush and his War Criminal Gang).

John N. Warfield (Professor Emeritus, George Mason University, Fairfax VA) has created much of the background science (and the methodologies to enable application of the science to real problems) that could enable the above understanding to develop. In other postings at Salon, I've indicated how to get information about John N. Warfield and his seminal contributions to systems science and systems design.

-- GSC

The buck once upon a time used to stop with Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower,..., John F. Kennedy and even Lyndon Baines Johnson. (They did not generally pass the bucks on).

That changed of course with Tricky Dick who had Henry Kissinger (a Nobel Prize winner, no less!) to field the buck for him and also General Alexander Haig, but at some point both Kissinger and haig gave up the unequal struggle, I understand.

Then there came Gerald Ford who all things considered actually did a fair job of fielding the buck considering that Lyndon Baines Johnson did not believe he was capable of farting and chewing gum simultaneously.

Jimmy Carter is not considered a great President, but he was no buck passer; he certainly held on to the buck when it came to him in the form of the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran and the subsequent Iran hostage crisis.

Then came Ronald Reagan, who was by no means a great President - but he was not a buck passer (IMHO).

Bush I was no genius but he did not seem to be a buck passer either.

Clinton apparently had some difficulty keeping his fly zipped when in the presence of nubile interns - but he passed no bucks anywhere (so far as I know).

GW Bush, War Criminal, is the liar, scoundrel, thief AND buck-passer non-pareil - the ace buck-passer & buck-juggler of all time.

Clad in his dinky little yellow-and-black pilot suit, GW Bush took the controls of a plane (except during takeoff and landing) to fly the awesome distance of 2.5 miles to the aircraft carrier, so that he could boast "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!". It turned out, of course, that there was no Mission and nothing really was accomplished except to destroy Iraq, and to dig an economic hole for the US and for the world (costing some $ 3 TRILLION!) which we shall now take decades to dig ourselves out of. This buck has been duly passed to the next President, Obama, and to at least 3 presidents to come after Obama!!

Also notable is GW Bush's trip to Baghdad during Thanksgiving 2003, where he 'fed' his troops there some phony plastic Thanksgiving turkey all tricked up to look good on TV. (I don't know to whom he passed this particular buck when the ploy did not work - but the Independent, London, brilliantly headlined the occasion as: "The Turkey Has Landed!" (check out: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1128-01.htm to read that superb report).

And then there was Katrina, where GW Bush duly congratulated his pet FEMA Director, Michael D. Brown, for the disasters he piled onto New Orleans in addition to the damage done by Katrina. "Doin' a GREAT job, Brownie!" Just weeks later, "Brownie" resigned/was sacked for the incompetent job he had done.

GW Bush also knows how to give a mean massage, so we could also give him the title World Master Masseur-in-Chief: we should probably honour him for his achievements in these very diverse fields!

GW Bush

-- POTUS

-- War Criminal

-- Heroic Pilot of War Planes (who evaded his Vietnam posting despite being highly pro-war)

-- Phony Turkey

-- Masseur-in-Chief

GSC