I have to start off today apologizing to my Huffington Post readers for possibly wearing out my welcome there this week, since this will be my fourth post in as many days there. But it's been a heckuva week, that's my excuse. I started with two columns on the anniversary of Barack Obama's Inauguration and his first year in office (one with my thoughts, and one with two extraordinary essays from young Americans I attended the Inauguration with). But, while I was wallowing in the calendar, other things were happening.

That's right. This column was moved to 12:05 in the morning, and Jay Leno announced he'd be taking over the normal Friday Talking Points column.

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Today could be a pivotal moment in the administration of President Barack Obama. Because the White House seems to have decided that the theme of next week's State Of The Union address is going to be: "Populism."

To which, I say: it's about time.

It's about time to start fighting for the little guy and against the fat cats. It's about time to start fighting, when it comes right down to it.

To say, however, that this is what I expected Obama to do would be to monumentally overstate what my expectations were. What I really expected the White House's reaction to losing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat was the standard Democratic response to (sadly) just about everything -- moving further to the right. I expected the White House to sit down, read the polls which said "voters are angry about Democratic weakness," and immediately decide that they had to weaken their agenda even further.

It defies logic, but it's what Democrats usually do. Which is why it's exactly what I expected Obama to do.

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of President Barack Hussein Obama's term in office. I thought long and hard about how to mark this event, especially since I had travelled to Washington, D.C. myself last year, in order to attend Obama's Inauguration. Now, I know that there are other subjects (cough, cough... Massachusetts... cough) I should be writing about today. But the calendar is the calendar, and we'll certainly have enough time in the future to discuss the coming year and what it all means. For today, though, I'd like to take a look back. And a look forward, in two very different ways.

Because I am turning the column over today to two people I shared the Inaugural Day experience with, both of whom are less than half my age. I and my wife stayed with a D.C. friend who attended the Inauguration with us, who also brought along her high-school-age daughter. I also met up with a college student I know in the region, for lunch, after the big ceremony was over.

I approached each of them recently with a fairly wide-open invitation: write about what the Inauguration meant to you. No limits, just write what you felt. I got back two very different essays, and I would like to beg your indulgence to read both of them, as I think they are representative of what a lot of young Americans are thinking, and continue to think, about President Barack Obama. And of how they see the future.

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It is significant, to me at least, that President Barack Obama's true first anniversary in office is about to be overshadowed by a special election to fill a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Think about it for a minute -- Obama's milestones have been obsessively tracked by the media, with countless stories about his "first 100 days" in office (and even quite a few on his "first 50 days"), lots of followup "second 100 days" articles, and then a truly bizarre paroxysm of stories on the anniversary of his election night. But as we approach the real milestone, tomorrow at noon (East Coast time), any "first year" stories are likely to be buried beneath microscopic analysis of whatever happens tonight in the Bay State. This is a stunning turnaround from not just a year ago, but from a few months ago. And, as I said, it is significant, because many are now left wondering: how did we get here? How did Obama get to the point he occupies now, from where he was a year ago?

Good question. The answer, in my humble opinion, is that the infamous presidential "bubble" has, sadly, descended over Obama's White House. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, probably had the most impenetrable presidential bubble of modern times (although a good argument can be made for his father, as well), but this is a danger virtually every president faces. Fresh new presidents enter office, convinced that they will be able to keep in touch with "The People," only to soon discover that safety and security (and the Washington "who gets invited to what party" culture) slowly smothers these "common man" ambitions. President Bill Clinton famously drove the Secret Service crazy by not only jogging, but stopping off at any handy McDonald's along the way. But even that faded, over time.

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[Seeing as how today is Martin Luther King Day, and also how the rest of this week will be taken up with marking President Barack Obama's first year in office; I thought that it was fitting to run, in lieu of a column today, King's acceptance speech in Oslo for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. Here's hoping everyone had a good MLK Day, and if you can't volunteer for some reason or another, at least make a donation for the victims of the Haitian earthquake fund in King's honor today. Without further ado, we hereby present the words of Nobel Laureate Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.]

-- Chris Weigant

December 10, 1964, Oslo, Norway

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.

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What a week!

Beginning the week, mere hours after last week's article went to press, was the story of Harry Reid's gaffe on the campaign trail last year. Following closely on this was Rod Blagojevich, cramming his foot so far into his mouth his ankle was no longer visible.

Much of the frenzied activity took place this week behind closed doors (and most decidedly not on C-SPAN), as healthcare reform entered its final negotiating phase. President Obama even decided to get involved, meaning we must be almost at the end of the fight. Ahem.

This fight, I should mention, may be speeded up considerably, due to tanking poll numbers for the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts, but we'll get to these pathetic details in a bit.

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For the past week or so, I have been examining President Obama's past year, and what he could make of his second year in office. This has unsurprisingly been a mix of optimism and pessimism. Because while Obama's second year could easily shape up to be better than his first, mostly it depends on Obama himself and what he chooses to do with it.

Let's be blunt -- this coming year may be Obama's last, best chance to have a successful presidency. Or, at the very least, make any progress at all on his agenda. Because, no matter what happens in the House of Representatives, all it is going to take is Democrats losing one or two seats in the Senate for massive legislative gridlock to descend upon the Nation's Capital until 2012.

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Is White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs truly this clueless, or is he just doing his job offering up the best possible spin for the White House and for his boss, President Obama? You decide. The following is an excerpt from a good article by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post today:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged on Wednesday that progressive voters' disinterest and unhappiness was threatening what traditionally should be a blowout Senate election victory for Democrats in Massachusetts.

Briefing reporters in his office, Gibbs said he did not know "why some segment of political observers don't seem to be as motivated" going into the special election between Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley and Republican State Senator Scott Brown.

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We've now officially entered what I have decided to call "Flagpole Season" -- as in: "run it up the flagpole, and see who salutes." I could just have easily called it "Trial Balloon Season," but we're all still a little too close to Balloon Boy for that one to "fly" (as it were). But whatever you call it, the time has come for Barack Obama's White House to figure out what they're going to tackle next (other than, of course, "jobs, jobs, jobs"). As they do, they're going to be leaking like a sieve for the next few weeks -- all in preparation for the biggest presidential speech of the year, the State Of The Union, which is now roughly three weeks away.

To be blunt, Obama needs to pick a few fights. Healthcare reform is winding up, but this particular fight has been so long and hard-fought that even proponents of the reform bill are exhausted and would really prefer not to hear or talk about it much longer. This is telling, because Democrats (all the way up to Obama) have simply not done a good job on the communications front during this battle. Who would have thought, a year ago, that Obama's main problems would be a lack of communication skills, and a perceived lack of passion in fighting for what he said he believed in?

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Every so often, I wake up knowing exactly the column I'm going to write. Only to find out, upon browsing around, that someone else has written it for me. Today was one of those days.

Harry Reid's situation seemed to me to be a perfect opportunity for him to follow in Chris Dodd's footsteps, and announce that -- after healthcare reform legislation is successfully put on Barack Obama's desk to sign -- Harry Reid would be stepping down as Senate Majority Leader, and giving someone else a shot at it. My reasoning had very little to do with the recently-revealed gaffe from Reid.

But, as I said, someone else had already said exactly what I was going to say, so I will direct you to Dylan Loewe's excellent article today up on Huffington Post, and you can read it for yourself. Lowe made exactly the points I was going to make, used exactly the reasoning I would have, and did it in probably about one-third the space I would have taken. So I have to take my hat off to him, and say "Well done!" And encourage everyone else to read his article.

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