By GORDON OSMOND
Paltalk News Network Contributor

The hallmark of the shifting sands of Obama’s first year in office would seem to be missed self-imposed deadlines. Gitmo is still open, the calendar year-end mandate to Iran has come and gone without effect, and most notably, recently, and significantly, the ever extending deadlines on health care reform have finally been overshot once and for all. (Gays in the military are still suffering in silence, but, to be fair, Obama’s promise to do something about that was not coupled with a date certain, as the others listed above were.)

It seems that Obama has indeed met his Waterloo now that his signature cause, on which he wasted the country’s time for a year, has toileted, or loo’d if you like. If any further evidence of Obama’s loss of power were necessary, the tortuously produced expression on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s face in announcing that the House was no longer prepared to do Obama’s bidding by adopting the Senate health reform bill “as is” supplied it in spades. The deflation can be sensed even in Ohio, where Obama’s cutsy jokes are for the first time falling flat, even when delivered in his populist mode, e.g., “This is not about me.” No? Since when?

So pivot he must, but to what? The possibilities are almost endless, so continuing are the problems that beset this country even after a year of Obama’s anointed attention. Obama seems to have decided on banks and jobs — areas where reasonable people can disagree as to the extent to which government should be involved. It is entirely reasonable to predict that Obama’s efforts in these areas may well follow the Massachusetts road map.

But how about tackling a problem that everyone, Republican, Democrat, or independent, agrees is a proper, if not indeed the paramount, assignment of government: national defense? It can hardly be asserted that this arena is presently under control. The congressional hearings held earlier this week were the essence of embarrassment. The decision to hold terrorists trials in downtown New York City is clearly worthy of being reversed. Add to this the new report on the Ft. Hood massacre which, if anything, compounds the political correctness approach which produced the tragedy in the first place and you have a really fertile field for presidential reformation and resuscitation.

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Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46799014@N06/4295397269/