A senior House Democrat likened President Barack Obama to former Vice President Dick Cheney over his handling of the war in Iraq.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who's been plagued by ethics investigations, compared the Democratic president to the former Republican vice president in an interview with the New York Daily News.

Rangel blasted Obama for having stayed in Iraq to continue the war initiated by the preceding administration, accusing the president of being there for oil -- a refrain leveled often by Democrats against Bush during the Iraq war.

"We are trying to buy our friends there," Rangel told the Daily News. "Stuff like that makes Cheney look good."

He also said this:

"I challenge anyone to tell me we aren't there because of the oil," Rangel said of the U.S. engagement in Iraq. "The lack of an honest explanation [for the war] is consistent with Bush and Cheney."

At the daily briefing today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, said, "I think she should and has apologized. Obviously those remarks do not reflect, certainly, the opinion of, most of the people in here, and certainly not of the administration."

This all adds up to a Teddy Roosevelt pivot-point for Obama, who shares many of that president's moral and intellectual convictions. But Obama can't embrace his inner T.R. as long as he's too in thrall to the supposed wisdom of the nation's meritocracy, too willing to settle for incremental pragmatism as a goal, and too inhibited by the fine points of Washington policy debates to embrace bold words and bold action. If he is to wield the big stick of reform against BP and the other powerful interests that have ripped us off, he will have to tell the big story with no holds barred.

That doesn't require a temper tantrum. Nor does it require him to plug the damn hole, which he can't do anyway. What he does have the power to fix is his presidency. Should he do so, and soon, he'll still have a real chance to mend a broken country as well.

it was during Kennedy's administration that [Helen Thomas] began the tradition of ending all presidential press conferences with a signature "Thank you, Mr. President"

no room to respond on that thread

lord knows i love HT but that tradition was a wrong one to get started - only serves to set the president up as a kind of monarch & leads to this kind of thing:

APRIL RYAN (of the American Urban Radio Networks): Mr. President, as the nation is at odds over war [i.e., invading Iraq, March 2003], with many organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus pushing for continued diplomacy through the U.N., how is your faith guiding you?

BUSH: I appreciate that question a lot. . . . My faith sustains me, because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength. If we were to commit our troops [to Iraq] -- if we were to commit our troops I would pray for their safety, and I would pray for the safety of innocent Iraqi lives as well. . . . I pray for peace, April. I pray for peace.