Barack Obama, The Perfect President

In one way, Barack Obama might be the perfect president: he was in the Senate, but not of it. He has no reason to feel any institutional loyalty, he wasn't there long enough to be coopted, and I suspect that he understands -- as all reasonably intelligent, reasonably impartial observers must understand -- that the Senate is a ridiculous institution and that Senators are, largely, pompous blowhards who, if they could do anything else, would. Spending any time at all with Joe Biden, who is what passes in the Senate for intelligent and well-informed (he almost certainly knows what century it is), can only underscore that message.

Thus, we see, thanks to OJ, that Obama didn't run his nominee for head of the CIA past Diane Feinstein, and she's now in a snit.

There are certain things that are true of the men who are elected President. One is that they want to be President. Barack Obama, like George W. Bush, doesn't see his allotted role as ushering in the re-animation of congressional governance. He's no more likely to run his nominees past the Senate grandees then George W. Bush, who was lectured by Harry Reid on the necessity of selecting his judicial nominees from a list provided by the Senate.

Does the Senate dare withhold its consent from the Democrat's anointed one? That's the beauty of it: the Senate dares nothing.