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• Wednesday, January 14, 2009 12:02 PM

  Obama's Start

  I like the observations because they confirm my own observations and ideas namely:

  1) Obama ran an excellent campaign because he and a few insiders were in control, they had several months to hone strategy which was essentially to defeat one chief rival in Hillary. Now as President elect he has expanded his team beyond the campaign strategists and has to deal with people he is only vaguely familiar with in his own team as well as the opposition.

  2) After becoming president elect, Obama has been briefed by Penatagon/National Security insiders about the stete of the war on terror at home and in the mid-east so now he has to deal with the bigger reality.

  3) The Republicans and consevative media are well honed at being the party out of power from the Clinton years and are very primed to avenge the liberal attacks on Bush and conservative domestic/foreign policies.

  4) Obama has never been a governor or run a large scale operation ala the Clintons, so Hillary's campaign accusation "He's not ready" is not now falling on deaf ears amongst the Hillary supporters and conservatives. Making her Sec'y of State fulfills a "keep your enemies closer" philosophy.

  5) Moves like the Sanjay Gupta appointment as Surgeon General underscores a shallow approach by selecting a TV personality who's good at presentation although presentation was Obama's own forte.

  6) Obama still has the "big plus" of his own intelligence, intellectual grasp of issues, personal grasp of race and the fact that he is still the one the people elected.

  —Victor P Read Victor P's other letters
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