Where's Obama? Voting present. He's always voted present.

The key to Obama's rise was never doing anything, avoiding all hard jobs and hard decisions.  Essentially he's the Anti-Christie.  He's extended this strategy to the Presidency.  Wapo's Ruth Marcus, a mainstream liberal supporter of his calls it the "Where's Waldo" Presidency.

Yet the dots connect to form an unsettling portrait of a "Where's Waldo?" presidency: You frequently have to squint to find the White House amid the larger landscape.

His role is to be the politically correct front man to the National Chicago machine.  The velvet glove on the iron fist of power so to speak.  The problem is that the machine has overreached so that not even Obama's velvet can cover it.