This is a guest note by Jordan D'Amato who has recently joined the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program as a research assistant.

As grainy pictures of China's new J-20 stealth fighter circulate the internet, many American defense analysts have been tempted to sound the alarms. After all, the past few weeks have been full of news which could be read as success in China's push to achieve parity with American military hardware.

In late December, Admiral Robert F. Willard of U.S. Pacific Command claimed that China's "carrier killer" ballistic missile had reached "initial operational capacity." Recently, one of Japan's leading newspapers reported that China's nuclear submarines has been able to operate around Taiwan undetected. And, looming in the background is China's first aircraft carrier, expected to be completed by 2014.

News from the American side has, likewise, reinforced the notion that the Sino-US military balance is shifting. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has announced that he intends to reduce the size of the Marines and Army. America's fifth generation fighter planes have run into a seemingly endless series of budget expansions and schedule delays--forcing the Pentagon to purchase more F-18's instead. The military, spread thin by years of war, needs time for its soldiers and equipment to recuperate.

In other words, if the news is to be believed, China is aggressively developing new military capabilities while America's armed forces face serious budgetary constraints. While the underlying message is true, the hype surrounding it needs to be deconstructed.

America's annual defense budget is still greater than the next top ten military spenders around the world combined. China's defense budget, by contrast, falls somewhere between 1/7 and 1/5 of that of the United States, according to a 2009 Pentagon report. While more money does not necessarily indicate a better military, in this case the US can claim a decisive advantage--experience.

While China may be fielding the early stages of next generation military platforms, it has yet to demonstrate that it can integrate and deploy them successfully in military action. "We're seeing [this type of integration] in individual elements of warfare, but not across the joint spectrum of warfighting" said Chief of Naval intelligence, Vice Admiral Jack Dorsett.

Instead of focusing on China's tactical level breakthroughs, the United States should be working to articulate its own grand strategic position more clearly. A strategy which regards the Peoples Republic of China as a rising power with legitimate regional interests and anxieties will better interpret China's actions for what they are. Acknowledging the constraints which China faces--from issues like pollution to demographic change to the enormously complex task of interacting with an international system as its primary challenger--will likewise reduce the chance for American overreaction. Buying into hype only intensifies spiraling mistrust. Fear may sell news. But it also puts pressure on policymakers to act, even if action is ill-advised.

Clearly defined grand strategic objectives would help guide long-term US military procurement. Strategic goals would provide a structure through which scarce resources could be distributed amongst competing objectives. Finally, an American grand strategy would give much needed context to Chinese military developments.

Viewed on their own, a stealth jet and an anti-ship ballistic missile should be a cause of alarm. But when the USS George Washington likes to drop by your backyard, it makes sense to have something guarding your door.

-- Jordan D'Amato

Please join the New America Foundation and TWN publisher Steve Clemons today from 12:15 pm - 1:30 pm for a discussion of New America Senior Fellow Parag Khanna's important new book, How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance. If you are in Washington you can RSVP for the event here, and it will stream live here at TWN.

-- Jordan D'Amato

This is a letter and collection of photos from regular TWN reader Paul Norheim that I thought deserved placement on the blog. -- Steve Clemons

Hi Steve,

I've just returned from a seven weeks' vacation in Ethiopia. Inspired by your (and Andrew Sullivan's) "A View From My Window" theme, I took some photographs from different hotel windows and terraces while staying in several hotels during my travels to different parts of the country.

Most of the pictures turned out to be crap, but here's a handful that I liked while viewing them on my PC monitor back home. Hope you like them too...

The first two pics are from one of the seven crater lakes inside and surrounding Debre Zeit, a town 45 km from Addis Ababa where my parents worked as teachers for 9 years during the 1960's and 70's, and where I spent much of my childhood:

Dreamland Resort, Lake Bishoftu, Ethiopia.

The third one is also from my former home town, but from a newly built lodge nearby another lake:

Debre Zeit, Ethiopia.

The next two photos were shot in Awasa, a town by a lake with the same name in the Rift Valley, Southern Ethiopia. I spent a couple of days there in an old, rundown hotel, and while on my way back to my room after a swim one day. I discovered this monkey sitting right outside my window. You may call it a variation on the View-from-my-window theme...

The View From My Window. Lake Awasa, Southern Ethiopia.

The next photo is taken from the same window/terrace - this time me watching mother & child in a tree just outside my room:

Lake Awasa, Southern Ethiopia.

The last picture is not taken from my hotel window, but from right outside the walls surrounding the old Muslim City of Harar, Eastern Ethiopia - not far from the Somalian border. In Harar not only the dogs, but also the hyenas walk freely around in the streets. They even have a "Hyena Man", who feeds the hyenas with raw meet every night. Feeding the Hyenas... that could also be a political metaphor....

Hyena man. Harar, Eastern Ethiopia.

And that was it... Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I certainly enjoy your blog!

Best.

Paul Norheim

The following is a statement by Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, regarding the shooting in Tucson, Arizona of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords:

"I was with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on a panel just last week at Renaissance Weekend in Charleston, South Carolina. Gabby is a warm, upbeat, and cheerful woman who I've been blessed to know. "Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the family of Representative Giffords, as well as all the families of the wounded and deceased in the wake of this truly traumatic event. "Regardless of political party, Americans are drawn together at this time of tragedy, and our prayers go out to the families of all the victims of this shocking act of violence.

"We are all Americans, and there're no Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, or liberals at times like these. When the violent acts of an individual aim to tear our society apart, they instead cause Americans to come together and unite stronger than ever.

"We pray for the lives lost, and for the full and speedy recovery of all who were wounded."

Sarah Palin's "comment writers" would be wise to learn something from Viguerie's operation.

-- Steve Clemons

Statement from Jim and Sarah Brady:

Jim and I are deeply saddened and deeply angered by the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, members of her staff, Judge John Roll, and the constituents, including a 9-year-old child, who had assembled with her outside of a Tucson grocery store today.

We know the deep pain and horror that all the family members and loved ones who have been made victims by this man and his gun are going through. We wish we didn't, but we know it too well. We were there almost 30 years ago, dealing with the doctors, the hospital, the surgeons, and so much uncertainty.

We were there coping with the horror of bullet wounds to the head, not knowing if Jim would live or die or what kind of life he would have. We were there hoping and praying for the best, that his life would be spared and the damage to his brilliant mind would be minimal.

We want all the families to know that we were there then, and we are with them now. Our thoughts, our hopes - we pray that they can feel them and know just a small measure of peace. We pray that they understand how committed we long have been to making our beloved country a place where gun violence doesn't happen so easily and destroy so many.

We offer our condolences to those who have lost their loved ones. We offer our assistance, in any way that it might be helpful, to those who have survived and will struggle, as we have, to heal from the unspeakable horror of gun violence.

With our love and prayers,

Jim and Sarah Brady

Here is more from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

-- Steve Clemons

I agree with Rachel Maddow. Fox News is not news. It's a political operation.

See the cutaway above by Fox as soon as Sarah Palin is mentioned at a Giffords shooting vigil as well as this good commentary by John Amato.

-- Steve Clemons

h/t to Dave Weigel tweet and John Amato

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sarah Palin has just put out a pretty weak statement regarding the tragic shooting of House Member Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of many others, including a federal judge.

As Giffords herself states in the MSNBC interview above, there can be consequences when politicos like Palin release campaign literature going after rivals with "gun site targets". Palin owes the nation more than the statement she has posted on her website - - and she needs to get her followers to recognize that there is no place in our country for this kind of violence.

Here is the ad Palin put out after the health care vote:

-- Steve Clemons

[The speech can now be watched any time above.]

At the Center for Strategic and International Studies today, from 12 noon until 1 pm EST, Japan Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara will speak.

His presentation will run here live at The Washington Note. Maehara, one of the top leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan, is an innovative thinker. I was impressed with his response to a question I posed on nuclear questions and Iran in April 2009 which folks can read here.

His statement will have significance given the efforts to restart negotiations with North Korea and with the upcoming visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington.

-- Steve Clemons

Courtesy of defense analyst and businessman Harlan Ullman and his wife, I had the opportunity to meet and talk extensively with Pakistan Punjab Province Governor Salman Taseer at their Georgetown home on May 17th this past year.

The intimate reception was comprised mostly of senior level Department of Defense and Department of State officials. Joint Chiefs of Staff Commander Mike Mullen was slated to attend but not sure he got there before I had to depart. Others in attendance included Sunday Times of London Washington Bureau Chief Christina Lamb, CSIS Senior Adviser and former Newsweek senior foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, Woman's National Democratic Club President Nucchi Currier, and others.

What struck me at the time was Governor Taseer's intensity about policy and his annoyance with the trivial. The reception was high-powered and honoring his wife and him, but he wasn't into small chat as he felt some in there were. Knowing little about the Punjab region, and sensing his discomfort, I took his lead and asked him to give me an ethno-political tour of his region and Pakistan and to give me a read on Zardari, Sharif, Kayani, and the ISI.

I hadn't briefed up on who the Governor really was before accepting Ullman's invitation (Ullman was also responsible for introducing me to Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari as well) -- but after a few minutes with Taseer, not through bravado but rather his acute and granular understanding of Pakistan's political order, I realized he was one of the country's major power brokers. Some describe him as both the left and right hands of President Zardari's liberalization efforts in the country. Governor Taseer spent quite a long time describing for me the country's key political actors and from where they drew their fuel.

In his private conversation at the time, he made no bones about disliking Nawaz Sharif and his followers who he viewed as both corrupt and incompetent. Although I'm unfamiliar with the governance structure in Punjab, he basically had to share power and the stage too frequently with a Sharif-affiliated official.

Taseer also talked a lot about Pakistan's youth, the dearth of options for them, and the growing problem if Islamic fanaticism -- prescient given the alleged reason his executioner used to kill him. He thought America's engagement in the region, while necessary, was often counter-productive, clunky, too high profile and arrogant.

I don't have much more to say about Taseer other than that in the hour I encountered him and during the very intense conversation we had -- so intense that Arnaud de Borchgrave jokingly said that I was "beyond" already what would normally be considered monopolizing Salman Taseer's time. Arnaud, however, did exactly what I did and asked the man a substantive rather than superfluous set of questions -- and one could see Taseer immediately start launching richly detailed political analyses of what was happening inside Pakistan.

His was a big personality. I recalled at the time how much his style and appreciation for the nuances of power reminded me of Richard Holbrooke.

Christopher Hitchens and I have numerous differences but are friends, and I respect him. I was often uncomfortable when I'd appear on a TV show with him and he'd rail against Islam, which I won't do. What made Hitchens more understandable is that he saw religious fundamentalism of any kind as one of the world's great evils -- and whether it is a Punjab Governor being assassinated or Egyptian Coptics being slaughtered in their place of worship or a US General framing America's conflicts in terms of battles between "their god" and "our god", this kind of murderous fever that wipes out innocents and pragmatists should worry everyone.

This paragraph in this morning's AfPak Channel daily brief on the assassination is chilling:

Salmaan Taseer, the outspoken PPP governor of Punjab who was assassinated yesterday in Islamabad by a 26 year old member of his elite security detail named Mumtaz Qadri in an apparent protest against Taseer's liberal views on Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws, was buried today in Lahore amid tightened security. Qadri, who is said to have told his fellow guards about his plan to kill Taseer ahead of time and asked them not to shoot so he could be taken alive, reportedly told photographers as he was led away that he was proud to have shot a "blasphemer". The governor was reportedly shot more than two dozen times in the back with rounds from a Kalashnikov rifle, and hospital officials said they recovered 26 bullets from his body. An investigation is underway to determine how Qadri, who had previously been flagged in Rawalpindi as a potential security risk, was assigned to Taseer's detail.

I didn't know Taseer well -- but I did have a very memorable encounter with him and his thinking -- and think that Pakistan and America's position in the region just lost even more ground with his assassination.

My condolences to the Ullmans who were his friends, Pakistan Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani, and to Governor Taseer's family and constituents.

-- Steve Clemons

Jonathan Pollard was paid for his espionage by a foreign government. Whether that government was the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, or as it turned out -- Israel -- Pollard was a compensated enemy of the US national interest and convicted.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just signed on to a letter addressed to President Obama appealing for Pollard's release.

As one former Reagan administration official stated, Pollard ferreted away and transferred to Israel, which allegedly passed along the information to the Soviet Union, the "crown jewels" of America's national security strategy. In virtually any other country outside the United States and Europe, Pollard would have been executed for his deeds.

Some want him released -- but I don't support this -- unless the price is very high.

Convicted spies can be bargaining chips. If Netanyahu were to commit to collapse his government, reassemble with sensible pragmatists in the Knesset, and deliver definitively on an internationally-accepted two state arrangement between Israel and Palestine, then I would support releasing Pollard to the Israelis.

There is nothing less than that that would suffice as the price for the release of this person who betrayed his nation. Israelis and Palestinians say that they could do a deal -- if both were serious -- in just a few months.

If so, then do the deal -- and release Pollard after the leaders have signed the pact and the Quartet and Arab League have blessed the arrangement.

That would be a price worth giving up a spy for -- but Obama giving him up for anything else would reinforce a view held by some that he is weak while simultaneously sending tremors of outrage through the intelligence community who see Pollard on par with Aldrich Ames and Richard Hanssen.

-- Steve Clemons

I have yet to meet the Washington Post's new online oped contributor, Jennifer Rubin, who has chastised Zbigniew Brzezinski for unrealistic realism but I look forward to a chance to seriously discuss the evolution of US foreign policy thinking and how each of the boxes views the others.

One part of her argument is that Brzezinski, she believes, raises "personal relationships" over core national interests -- and she finishes her piece with substantial commentary from two leading neoconservatives, Jamie Fly and Stephen Yates, about the core character and intentions of China being incompatible with American interests.

A couple of points. Even realists would argue that if personal connections can be made between leaders so that basic understandings about intentions and national resolve can be firmly and unsentimentally established and understood, then those personal relationships play a role. Such relationships certainly mattered to Kissinger and Nixon in opening China. When Yeltsin's Russia was in freefall, Richard Nixon in his last years worked hard with George H.W. Bush and leaders in Japan and Europe to throw Yeltsin a life preserver -- thus holding Yeltsin in power a bit longer but more importantly preserving what was then an experiment in democracy in a previously ruthlessly totalitarian state.

Second, I happen to appreciate the work and thinking of Stephen Yates and Jamie Fly and follow both of them. Yates and I have communicated for years and find ourselves in both occasional agreement and disagreement over China.

They are not the problem of Rubin's article.

The problem is a complete absence of commentary on Brzezinski's brand of realism from either the right or left realist spheres.

It seems to me that a stronger article might have sought out the Nixon Center's Dimitri Simes or Paul Saunders or might have reached out to Henry Kissinger himself. Or she could have polled her Washington Post colleagues David Ignatius or Katrina van den Heuvel, my favorite realist on the left. There are others like Charles Kupchan at the Council on Foreign Relations, Brian Katulis at the Center for American Progress, Flynt Leverett at the New America Foundation, Martin Indyk at Brookings, or John Hamre at CSIS; Chuck Hagel at Georgetown, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Center for the Study of the Presidency chief David Abshire, former CFR Chair and US Trade Representative Carla Hills, former Secretary of State James Baker or even Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations to acquire a realist critique of what Rubin felt was Brzezinski's left field offering.

Let's hope that Ms. Rubin works harder to reach out to some who might be able to provide some other portals into national security realism than those she usually hangs with.

As I wrote earlier, I feel that Brzezinski offers a sensible and important framework for thinking about US-China challenges. Rubin seems not to realize that China is perceived by many nations today as the Google of countries -- while the US looks more like a GM of nations, a very well-branded, sprawling, yet underperforming mega-country.

America needs to rewire and retool -- and in the world that lies ahead, it is going to be important to use areas of convergent interest between China and the US to try and leverage more globally constructive and responsible behavior by China, which I agree with Rubin, is behaving in troubling ways of late.

But as her article stands now, Rubin's piece is more swipe than substance and could have been used to really elucidate much more seriously the differences between the values-driven schools of foreign policy and those in the national-interest wings.

-- Steve Clemons

During the 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton took a very tough line on China -- arguing then that President George W. Bush should boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies because of China's policies on Tibet and Darfur. My response to then presidential candidate Clinton was that that kind of posture was not presidential -- as she would simply raise the price for cooperation from China on everything international, environmental, and economic the US was trying to achieve while at the same time doing nothing to actually solve the problems in Tibet and Darfur.

Fortunately, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her China position a major makeover, and she moved to a much more realistic and productive position.

But US-China relations -- no matter the posture that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton or Bob Gates would prefer -- remain complicated and fragile.

On January 19th, President Obama will host China's President Hu Jintao for a State Dinner at the White House. Zbigniew Brzezinski suggests in this morning's New York Times that the visit is "the most important top-level United States-Chinese encounter since Deng Xiaoping's historic trip more than 30 years ago."

I agree with Brzezinski's assessment and his argument that the outcome of the meeting needs to move significantly beyond "boilerplate."

Brzezinski's piece should be read in full -- particularly for its quick recitation of the challenges that are currently facing the often tension-filled relationship.

But what is also clear is that Chinese leaders and citizens need to read this article as much as Americans do. Brzezinski makes the case that both sides need each other fundamentally -- and while not having to ignore each other's differences and warts, particularly Chinese human rights standards and US-style high-handed moralism and economic sector corruption, they need to enunciate a framework that commits to working together on mutual challenges.

I thought that this clip was particularly key:

The worst outcome for Asia's long-term stability as well as for the American-Chinese relationship would be a drift into escalating reciprocal demonization. What's more, the temptations to follow such a course are likely to grow as both countries face difficulties at home.

The pressures are real. The United States' need for comprehensive domestic renewal, for instance, is in many respects the price of having shouldered the burdens of waging the 40-year cold war, and it is in part the price of having neglected for the last 20 years mounting evidence of its own domestic obsolescence. Our weakening infrastructure is merely a symptom of the country's slide backward into the 20th century.

China, meanwhile, is struggling to manage an overheated economy within an inflexible political system. Some pronouncements by Chinese commentators smack of premature triumphalism regarding both China's domestic transformation and its global role. (Those Chinese leaders who still take Marxist classics seriously might do well to re-read Stalin's message of 1930 to the party cadres titled "Dizzy With Success," which warned against "a spirit of vanity and conceit.")

Brzezinski is right that America needs to acknowledge the fatigue of the Cold War and create circumstances by which it can reinvest in its domestic economy, jobs base and infrastructure -- while China needs to beware the intoxication of its quick rise. (Here are some of my previous thoughts on "Beijing's Fragile Swagger.")

I know that the White House National Security Council team has been focused on putting together a serious China strategy and that an September 2010 visit by then Deputy (now not Deputy) National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon to Beijing laid the groundwork for a constructive pivot in what looked to be seriously deteriorating US-China relations.

Brzezinski's call for a framework for the relationship to be embraced publicly by both leaders at this important meeting is on target.

Stay tuned to the China channel this month.

-- Steve Clemons

Foreign Policy magazine asked those attending its major gala release at The Corcoran of the 2010 FP100 Top Global Thinkers to feel free to comment and send in thoughts on who should have been on the list and did not make the cut for one reason or another.

I decided to give this a shot and noted that two key intellectuals (though I have thought of a dozen or more since) should have been included. My letter appears today in the most recent issue of Foreign Policy.

The letter isn't long -- but in it I make the point that Charles Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has swum upstream writing and thinking about unlikely eruptions of peace in war-torn corners of human history and thinks about these episodes systematically. Kupchan's work deserves to be on this roster.

I also suggest Chalmers Johnson who I think stands out as one of the greatest thinkers of the last century -- certainly the last half of the 20th century -- for his contributions on the "developmental state" and for his provocative commentary on the state of America's post-Cold War empire.

I should have also added Princeton's G. John Ikenberry whose concept of a "liberal Leviathan" describing America's predicament with the rest of the world has and will be an enormously important frame through which to look at the management and containment of American power.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Kori Schake; click image for larger version)

My friend Kori Schake sent in this beautiful pic of Rainbow Canyon in the Panamint Range.

Tomorrow everything heats up again on TWN -- Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Iran, Cuba, America's jobs and infrastructure deficits, and more.

More then.

-- Steve Clemons

Happy New Year to all from Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner, Buddy & Annie!

-- Steve Clemons

Brian Till is author of the forthcoming Conversations with Power: What Great Presidents and Prime Ministers Can Teach Us about Leadership -- and when he read my answer to a question in a profile of yours truly in The Washington Blade, he said that he "choked on his Coke." Laughing, of course, with the fizzy brown stuff spraying all over my desk where he was seated.

I had some fun in answering 20 questions posed by the Blade's Joey DiGuglielmo and enjoyed doing a pic shoot with Blade photographer Michael Key who I met right after the Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal signing ceremony, which he also shot.

The line Brian Till choked over? Well, won't surprise most of you:

DiGuglielmo: If your life were a book, what would the title be?

Clemons: "America's Gay Machiavelli"

All the best for a great new year -- and hope you enjoy the Q&A;!

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Michael Key, Washington Blade)

In November, my Japan Policy Research Institute co-founder Chalmers Johnson passed away. I wrote about him here at the time, but in early December I did an interview with WBEZ Chicago's Jerome McDonnell which I never posted here and really liked.

So, for those interested in Chalmers Johnson who I think was one of the nation's great intellectual giants of the last century, enjoy.

-- Steve Clemons

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson knows all the great news angles and pardoning Billy the Kid, as he was thinking of doing, would have kept him ablaze in the press for at least a week. Richardson and this pardon may have been the single threat to Anderson Cooper's & Kathy Griffin's ratings tonight.

But pardoning the Kid would have been a major mistake and would have been something that might have preempted President Barack Obama from putting the talented nearly former New Mexico Governor to work on the international stage where he really belongs.

I think Richardson is the right presidential envoy to finally end the Cold War with Cuba and bring that relationship into the 21st century.

Richardson should be made America's Special Presidential Envoy on US-Cuba policy.

-- Steve Clemons

Greetings from Chestertown, Maryland where I'm currently tallying up President Obama's recent foreign policy achievements vs. failures and challenges left on the table. I spend a lot of time thinking about US-Cuba policy (in fact, today the Cuban Interests Section celebrates the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution), Israel/Palestine, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other parts of the world.

I do think that there are noticeable strengths on the Obama national security team, but the most important thing that the President himself has to remember and implement is his mantra from the campaign still often recounted by David Axelrod, "good policy is good politics."

There is no way to look at the Middle East mess we still have before us -- or our policy with Cuba -- believing that the President is insisting on good policy trumping his political advisers.

More soon -- but I wanted to wish everyone on whatever side of whatever line you may be in these policy debates a fantastic new year.

-- Steve Clemons

2010 certainly wasn't a dull year.

Between Wikileaks and BP's leaks, D's and R's battling for Congress, iPads making many forget what books feel like, and of course the now ubiquitous tea partiers -- there was maybe too much material.

Meanwhile the Obama team grappled for new solutions in the Middle East and beyond - notably, with Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, and Iran. DC got a new mayor, the US and Russia got a nuclear treaty, and a giant volcano even erupted.

TWN's cartoonist Jonathan Guyer has been following all of these movements with a fountain pen in hand. Enjoy this slideshow of 2010 in 'toons - many of these originally debuted here at The Washington Note.

And if your memory needs a quick refresher, click here to see how 2009 looked in 'toons.

All the best for the New Year!

-- Steve Clemons

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Barack Obama's team is working better and delivering results that just weeks ago seemed out of reach. Tomorrow, I'm going to be offering thoughts on these results and how the Obama White House is gaining ground.

But as a preview, I think that the successes are tied to four key factors: (1) Barack Obama seems more comfortable holding the line and fighting the long fight rather than giving ground early in efforts to seduce his opponents; (2) Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough, John Brennan and the entire National Security Council team are just working better together and are sewn into Obama Land better than before; (3) Rahm is doing what he always should have been doing -- staying in the spotlight as he runs for Mayor of Chicago; No one hears from the interim Chief of Staff Pete Rouse who is moving people, initiatives, and game plans so deftly that no one sess his hand (keep him!); and (4) Joe Biden and his apparatus not only have a killer batting average on the tough jobs Obama has given him (Russia, START, nuclear summitry, Iraq, keeping peace with the labor community) but his team in its entirety is woven in deeply as part of the Obama apparatus (no more David Addington cells).

More tomorrow, and while I admit that there have been significant failures, missteps, and occasional weak knees when Obama should have clung to the courage of his convictions, there have been heartening successes.

Momentum may have changed in the President's favor -- even while the Congress has become a higher hill.

-- Steve Clemons