We sat there for all those seasons wondering why we could not have a real President Bartlet, with all those smart people worrying about our country and its problems. When the Bartlet administration came to an end, and the series did, too, we were disappointed that we would not see what the Santos administration would be like with Josh Lyman as chief of staff and the strongest and best of the new president's political opponents as Secretary of State.

Now we will see how that comes out. Not in fiction. For real.


Just look at the photographs of "Obama's People." in tomorrow's Times Magazine
particularly that of Rahm Emmanuel.

I gather I am not allowed to link directly to the Rahm photo but look at it and then this one of Brad Whitford as Josh Lyman.



Rahm seems a bit tougher, with hands on hips ready to take on all comers, but that's Hollywood for you softening up the rough edges of real life.

I have the sense that Aaron Sorkin, John Wells and Thomas Schlamme must be really busy now writing Tuesday's episode.

There is awfully serious business before the new administration, of course, but it would truly be a mistake to ignore the celebratory mood of the country. If we were somewhat disappointed when the Iraqis we "liberated" by removing Saddam Hussein did not seem as excited to see us as we though they might (the Vice President may have been a bit over exuberant) there is no mistaking how our own "liberation" is being received.

And why not? The week begins with a new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee being the same person who, as a young Navy officer, asked the same committee

how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam

That day in 1971, when most of us first heard of him, Lt.(j.g) Kerry also asked the committee he now chairs:

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? ...

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

And in its first substantive hearing with Senator John Kerry as its chair, the committee was deciding whether to confirm Hillary Clinton, whose husband worked for the Senator who was chairman when Lt. Kerry testified. And the foreign policy they discussed was one which sounds like the United States we remember from better and more optimistic times, and you started to think that the country had, indeed, "turned."

A day or so later it was Eric Holder's turn to appear before the Judiciary Committee considering his nomination as Attorney General. Questioned by another one of the great people who now lead our country, Senator Russell Feingold, about the limits of presidential authority, the Attorney General-designate said:

HOLDER: The president, as I've said, is not above the law, has a constitutional obligation to follow the law and execute the laws that this Congress passes. If you look at the Steel Seizure concurrence of Justice Jackson that, I think, sets out in really wonderful form the power that the president has and where the president's power is strongest and where it is weakest.

It is weakest in Category 3 where Congress has indicated something contrary to what the president wants to do. That is where Justice Jackson says the president's power is at its lowest level. And I think -- I'm not a constitutional scholar -- but I think that there has never been a president who's been upheld when he's tried to act in Category 3. I think, but I'm not sure.

FEINGOLD: I believe that's right. And I want to follow that. Using the construct of Justice Jackson, more specifically, does the president, in your opinion, have the authority, acting as commander- in-chief, to authorize warrantless searches of Americans homes and wiretaps of their conversations in violation of the criminal and foreign intelligence statutes of this country?

HOLDER: I think you're then getting into Category 3 behavior by the president. Justice Jackson did not say that the president did not have any ability to act in Category 3. Although, as I said, I'm not sure there's ever been an instance where (inaudible) courts have said that the president did act appropriately in that category.

It seems to maybe it's difficult it imagine a set of circumstances given the hypothetical that you have used and given the statutes that you have referenced that the president would be acting in an appropriate way given the Jackson construct, when I think is a good one.

FEINGOLD: So you see FISA law as under Category 3, right?

HOLDER: Yes. I think the FISA law is a good statute and it has an exclusivity provision that seems to me to be pretty clear.

FEINGOLD: You discussed with Senator Hatch whether or not there was some kind of independent, inherent power of the president. Is there anything in the FISA statute that makes you believe that the president has the ability under some other inherent power to disregard the FISA statute?

HOLDER: No, I do not see that in the FISA statute.

During those dark moments of the recent past, there were bleats from these pages such as this (with its link to the "steel seizure case") and, just as a for instance, this or this, among others, but obviously, with any affront to bloggers anywhere (I will leave that to the Governor of Alaska), having an Attorney General say much the same thing is so much more conforting than reading one's own fear that the republic is going down the toilet.

And, yes, members of the committee, including the occasionally brave Senator Arlen Spector, who could not rouse themselves to do anything about the thieves they permitted to pervert the Justice Department into a wing of a political party, found it worthwhile to lecture the incoming Attorney General about mistakes President Clinton made before they stole the presidency.

We have our work cut out for us and we are not without blame for the mess we are in. Watching this sad spectacle of a man not even remotely fit for the office slink away from the presidency in a wave of more nonsense and foolishness than could even be imagined from him, we can laugh (Letterman's recap of his "Great Moments" series was spectacular ) until we realize how he got there: There were people who voted for him because of Vice President Gore's stiffness on a stage, because he sighed during a debate and had an advisor who instructed him on the "earth tones" he should wear. There were millions of people who could not see a "dime's worth of difference between him and the idiot who was elected. This is the country in which we live.

But maybe Lt. Kerry's prediction from so long ago has come true. Maybe we have turned a corner. It will be an exciting, historical and, I am certain, memorable week to come.

Bring it on.