Perhaps more than any other president in recent memory, when Barack Obama took office in early 2009 he faced a host of nearly overwhelming problems: huge stock market losses; giant “too big to fail” banks on the verge of failure; an auto industry about to go belly-up; two ongoing wars with no end in sight; home foreclosures at a record high; and soaring unemployment, to mention just a few.

Add to that witches’ brew the assertion made by GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell:  “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  Is it any wonder that Obama spent much of his first term concentrating on the most urgent items on his agenda: health care reform, ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and salvaging a tanking economy, all the while dealing with Republicans in Congress who refused to govern as they were elected to do?