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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UPDATE: [15:30 Pacific]

OK, everything is uploaded, so all old links should be working. Site seems stable for now. There are still bugs and things not working exactly right, but I'm still working on them, so hopefully they'll get better.

If you regularly comment here, you may have to either delete all "chrisweigant.com" cookies, or totally reload the page (or even quit and relaunch your browser) before you start getting the new site. Try logging in, and you should see a new login page. If you don't, you're still in the old site somehow.

[End update... more later...]

Well, we're up and running. Kind of.

The core code of the site has been upgraded at this point, but nothing has been adequately tested. So today (Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010), the site will have a lot of quirks. As the day progresses, bugs will be fixed, and things will start working again.

One thing you should be aware of is that your old "cookies" will not work anymore. What this means to you is that you may experience problems logging in to the site, or viewing it.

You should re-load this page and will have to change any "automatic" login settings, and manually log in before they will work again.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and promise that throughout the day, the site will look better and better, so reload it often to see our progress!

Before we begin our weekly talking points, we must sadly offer our condolences to Vice President Joe Biden, whose mother just passed away. No matter what side of the political divide you come from, or what you think of our Vice President, losing your mother is something everyone can sympathize with, so we offer our thoughts to the Biden family in this sad time for them.

Of course, in Washington, the craziness goes on as usual, forcing us once again to pay attention to various bits of lunacy. Topping the list of lunatics this week was a man arrested for jogging naked near the White House. Now, I've got to admit, although "streaking" is a fad we all wish would make a comeback, you've got to hand it to this guy for pulling such a stunt in January in Washington, rather than waiting until at least the cherry blossoms had peeked out. Jogging around The Ellipse naked in January? Brrr!

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[Note: Since we spent much of the week either looking back at 2009 or looking forward to what 2010 has in store, I thought my New Year's column from the beginning of 2009 was worth looking at again, to see how my suggestions for New Year's resoultions from last year stacked up against reality.

This column originally ran January 2, 2009, which was a Friday. Meaning for the first time ever (I believe) we're running a special Thursday Talking Points... or something. The column originally had "Friday Talking Points [59]" in the title, which I replaced, for clarity's sake, with "[2009]" above.

One last thing, if you missed it, earlier today I posted a Program Note which spells out what to expect from this site this weekend. We will be upgrading the site during the weekend, which means service may be interrupted at times. The Program Note is in the form of "Frequently Asked Questions" to let you know what to expect.]

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