Obama: “Arbiter in Chief”

With several senior, experienced foreign policy people at his side, President-elect Barack Obama has done what many of us might do: he has sent two out of the room, kept one and made another a domestic policy chieftain.

Vice President-elect and former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden will run middle class education, training and jobs programs…..

Biden is now a “domestic.”

Former Obama rival Hillary Clinton will be out of the U.S. Senate where she could harass Obama from the sidelines and she is now working for Obama from Foggy Bottom.  This gets Clintons out of the Senate and out of the White House too.  And one false move and Hillary is jobless without even a shot at the Senate again for some time.

The Governor of New York might just replace the experiened Mrs. Clinton with a newby Kennedy; which shouldn’t worry the White House.

And Susan Rice, one of the most experienced and liberal Obama foreign policy aides will be in New York at the U.N. and not in the Oval Office.

Who will be in the Oval with President Obama?  Former Marine Corps General James Jones, the National Security Advisor.  And Rahm Emanuel.  Maybe.

All this will make President Obama the “Arbiter in Chief.”

As Vice President-elect Biden said of his role as an advisor:

“If in fact there is no consensus, [I’d] go to the president of the United States and say, ‘Mr. President, I think we should be doing this, cabinet member so-and-so thinks that. You’re going to have to resolve what it is we think we should do.’ ”

Above: President-elect Barack Obama takes questions from reporters during a news conference in Chicago, Monday, Dec. 1, 2008, with, from left to right: Attorney General-designate Eric Holder; Homeland Security Secretary-designate Janet Napolitano; Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Vice President-elect Joe Biden; Secretary of State-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.; National Security Adviser-designate Ret. Marine Gen. James Jones; and United Nations Ambassador-designate Susan Rice.(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

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