I know someone who was there that night, and I can tell you with a fair degree of confidence that he did not know that Mary Jo was in the back seat of his car (which is where her body was found.) What happened was not honorable, but also it was not negligent homicide, which is what most people think.

He was leaving with someone else (not his wife), and unbeknownst to him Mary Jo, who was drunk, as were most of the people at the party, had climbed into his car and fell asleep. When the car went off the bridge, he and his "friend" were safe, and only later did they discover that Mary Jo died in the car.

Rather than fess up to all the sordid details, ruining yet another person's reputation, they decided to go with the story that got played. No one is perfect, but my thought was at the time, and remains, that he was only human.

What do you think about this side to the story? (It was told to me right after it happened, BTW, by someone who was there)

All good points, Aunt Sam.

And, no, we can't say for certain how anyone would perform as POTUS.

But the main point here is to imagine what true leadership looks like, and how it could have curtailed so much of the fear-mongering and the half-measures that keenly threaten to undermine the effort to realize real health care reform.

Yes, Obama has been in office only a short time. But he possessed the most political capital he will ever know at the time of his Inauguration, and we have seen much of it squandered in this DLC-style push to strategically find the middle and hope we can all just get along.

Imagine how different it would be if he were to instead have issued a clarion call for taking pride in our collective principles by denouncing and declaring as an abomination all the ugliness and the de facto criminality of the last Administration, putting its apologists (The GOP) on notice that a new day has arrived in Washington. Imagine what real leadership would have looked like in a call for us to accept the challenge of universal health care; in a call for us to roll up our sleeves, take on whatever sacrifices were needed for the long-term good of the country, and a genuine call to rise up against the corporate interests and other profiteers who stand in our way of real reform.

The possibilities were enormous, and they now steadily diminish into pay-for-play politics as usual. And we are left with the "audacity of hope" that somehow Obama is simply playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.

It has indeed only been less than a year into this Administration as you point out. But I say we already suffer for lack of leadership, having gotten gamesmanship instead.

Or if LBJ were President? Baucus and Conrad and a few others would have already paid a visit to the White House for a meeting wherein they would have been served their heads on a platter. Even gamesmanship requires discipline of a kind that has yet to be seen in this process.

So, basically, you wanted him to ride in on his magic pony wearing his magic helmet and solve all our ills with a wave of his magic sword.

Presidents don't charge people. U.S. Attorneys or the Attorney General (or his assistants) charge people. There's a reason why, unique among the executive departments, we have, and demand, a wall between the Justice Department and the president and a reason we were outraged when Bush (like Nixon before him) tried to breach that wall. That doesn't change just because we want to breach the wall in the cause of rightousness.

That's why Obama's talk about not wanting to go up the chain was just that, talk for political effect. Ultimately, the call is on the AG.

And, hey, nothing screams "freedom and democracy" to America and the world like a politician ordering a big bunch of prosecutions of his political opponents. I'm sure once they saw we mean business, the gun-toting crazies who are terrified that universal health care means their liberties are being stolen from them would have settled right down and towed the party line once they saw we mean business. And what an outstanding precedent to set for the next time the Republicans claw their way back into power.

Certainly, however, there would be no domestic political or economic fallout that would in any way impede pursuit of the rest of your agenda, so why not go for it?

2. Get rid of DADT with a signature? It's an Act of Congress signed into law by Bill Clinton. Bush might have thought he had the power to ignore acts of Congress he found politically unappealing, but that's kinda one of the things we were mad at him about, wasn't it?

3. Right. It's a well-known political truism that, what with Congress being a separate and co-equal branch of government with numerous constitutional checks and balances at it's disposal with which to defend it's status and perogatives, the best possible way to get things with Congress is to stamp your feet, beat your breast and issue ultimatums.

And certainly, a top down approach to healthcare reform worked out great for the Clintons.

And, right, the problem with the Republican base is that Democrats haven't been tellilng them that they're deluded fools. Wow, how could we not have seen that before. We'll just tell them they're deluded fools being used by cynical rich bastards and then, being reasonable sorts as they are, the scales will fall from their eyes and they'll become good Democrats.

So, basically, it sounds to me like what you want wanted was someone who would act like a Democratic version of George W. Bush. Arrogant, hyper-political, contemptuous of constitutional limits, given to petulent ultamatums and gratuitously polarizing dichotomies and pronouncements. Yeah, that would have worked great.

Okay, no. I know you don't want that. What it really sounds to me like is that you're just venting because it's turning out that getting shit done in the real world, especially while also trying to forestall another Great Depression and cleaning up the wreckage left by the last bunch, is really hard. Sounds like you know that doing that getting stuff done in the real world involves unpleasant choices between greater and lesser evils--often without sufficient advance information to know which is greater and which is lesser--and it it's really pissing you off.

Well, FWIW, I'm right there with you in that club.