I guess one could say that at least she doesn't (yet) have as many "assistants" as her equally spendthrift husband -- our Dear Leader -- has "czars" (last count on that was somewhere upwards of 33, or 34, or 35). And since we don't know exactly how many of them there are, much less how big each of their staffs are, we also don't know how much they are all costing us. We just know that, although other presidents have also had "czars" and other assistants, none has ever had as many of either as our current one, The One. (So, don't try to tell me that Chicago-style cronyism doesn't pay, either, in both Barack's and also apparently Michelle's playbook.) 

But, one does have to wonder why Michelle O. needs so much help, so many assistants, all at taxpayer expense, when Jackie Kennedy had ONE, Hillary Clinton had THREE and Laura Bush had ONE.

"In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much." "See, that's why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service."  Michelle Obama

Gee, Michelle, are you referring to when you left the big law firm and began your "public service" by taking a big Chicago hospital PR job created for you after your husband became a State senator and that hospital received some State funding and which, I'm sure only by sheer coincidence, also raised your salary to $350,000 a year? THAT kind of "public service"? THAT kind of "sacrifice"? Wow, what a gal! 

Of course, Michelle Obama does not get paid anything to serve as the First Lady. She just gets to live in a fully wait-staffed mansion, with free room and board, personal chef service, free transportation of any type she needs, any time she needs it, plus have designer this and designer that offered to her to wear all the time, and, of course, she doesn't have any official duties to perform, any more than did any of her predecessors. It's obviously a rough life, to be sure, but, as they say, somebody has to do it.

And all this hasn't stopped "Michelle, ma belle" from hiring an unprecedented number of "staffers" to cater to her every request, all in the midst of our "Great Recession" when regular Americans are losing their jobs and in some cases their homes. And when the president and his first lady both might give some thought to setting a good example, showing some understanding and personal restraint, and practicing some frugality like many of their fellow Americans are having to do, instead of living like a king and queen and spending taxpayer money like it was going out of style (which, in fact, it is, as there is less and less of it, and more and more debt.)

Just think about the fact that Mary Lincoln was publicly criticized for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War, and Mamie Eisenhower had to pay the salary for her own personal secretary. Of course, Lincoln and Eisenhower were both Republicans, so that probably made the difference.

Herewith, according to Canada Free Press, the names and numbers pertaining to Michelle O's big band of "helpers," to include some you may not be able to tell from their job description exactly what their "job" really is, with occasional parenthetical comments by your not-so-humble and sometimes snide and sarcastic but seldom snarky "opinionator":

1. $172,200 - Sher, Susan - Chief of Staff

2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. - Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady

3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. - Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary

4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. - Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady

5. $90,000 - Winter, Melissa E. - Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady

6. $90,000 - Medina, David S. - Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady

(Okay, doesn't that make two Deputy Chiefs of Staff to the First Lady? Or at least one-and-a-half -- half of # 5 and all of # 6? And which Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady, each receiving $90,000 per year, is the real one?)

7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. - Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady

8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. - Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady

9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper - Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady

10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. - Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary

11. $65,000 - Reinstein, Joseph B. - Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary

(Okay, so there's already a White House Social Secretary (see # 3 above), who supposedly reports to the First Lady, as well as a Deputy Associate Director, Social Office (see # 18 below), AND a Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary (see # 20 below). So, with #'s 10 and 11, there is either a misprint, a typo of some kind, or there really are ALSO two, full-time Deputy Directors and Deputy Social Secretaries, each paid the same amount of $65,000, for a combined total of $130,000 per year, for the same job, and who also work for the First Lady. Hmmm, I think I know where we can save $65,000 per year right away. Which one of you two Deputy Directors and Deputy Social Secretaries wants to go? Toss a coin and call heads or tails.)

12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. - Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator for the First Lady

13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. - Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady

14. $90,000 - Lewis, Dana M. - Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady

(No telling what poor Dana Lewis, with a job title as vague as that, has to do to earn her $90,000 of taxpayer money a year. Whatever, whenever, I would guess. Poor woman probably seldom even sleeps.)

15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. - Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary to the First Lady

16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. - Special Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide to the First Lady

(Wait a minute. You've already got: (a) a Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady at $75,000 per year, (b) a Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator for the First Lady at $62,000 per year, (c) a Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady at $60,000 per year, and (d) a Special Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide to the First Lady at $50,000 per year. That's four people, at a total cost of $247,000 per year, all focused on the advancing, scheduling, event coordinating and aiding of the First Lady's travel. Just how much does Michelle need to travel, especially separate from her husband, whose travel is planned down to a gnat's eyelash and always includes everything and everyone traveling with him, as well? And, by the way, isn't the Secret Service -- you know, those guys and gals already on the taxpayers' payroll to protect and travel with the president and his family members -- already responsible for most of the advance work, scheduling and trip coordination for any and all presidential and/or family member forays, foreign and domestic, anyway? So, why are we paying an "extra" almost a quarter of a million dollars in taxpayer money for all these people to do that just for the First Lady? Hello? Anyone?)
   
17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. - Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady

18. $45,000 - Tubman, Samantha - Deputy Associate Director, Social Office

19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. - Executive Assistant to the Chief of Staff to the First Lady

(So, there's a Chief of Staff to the First Lady, at least one-and-a-half but maybe two Deputy Chiefs of Staff to the First Lady, AND now we find out there's ALSO an Executive Assistant to the Chief of Staff to the First Lady? It makes one wonder, with all these "other assistant" folks doing all that they supposedly do to earn their taxpayer salaries, just how much "chief of staffing" does there need to be? I guess the more "others" you have to keep up with, though, the more "chief of staffing" you need to do, huh?)

20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. - Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary

21. $40,000 - Bookey, Natalie - Staff Assistant

22. $40,000 - Jackson, Deilia A. - Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady

(Okay, there's: (a) a Director of Communications for the First Lady, (b) a Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady, (c) an Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary to the First Lady, (d) an Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady and (e) a Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady. First, isn't all this -- press, correspondence, etc. -- just all "communications" of one type or another? So, why can't you have a Director of Communications, with one Deputy Director for Press and one for Correspondence and just be done with it? Second, I know the First Lady sometimes has to make public appearances and say a few words and I can imagine that a lot of people write to the First Lady on a range of topics which they think she can better address than her husband, the president, can. But, please, five different people, each with important-sounding titles and hefty salaries, in addition to however many minions work for each of them, all to help the First Lady "communicate"? Especially when she's already supposed to be such an intelligent and articulate Ivy League educated and Harvard Law School graduated woman? And especially when, as First Lady, she's not supposed to ever say anything important about policy, or much of anything else, anyway? Oh, by the way, and not to cause any trouble, mind you -- and certainly not to encourage any MORE Michelle "helpers" -- but on the other hand and just for the sake of contrariness, how can you have an Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady and a Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady without first having a Director of Correspondence for the First Lady? Just wondering. Sorry, but my mind just works that way sometimes.)        

Well, aside from now almost mind-numbingly wondering when it's proper to use "for the First Lady" or "to the First Lady" in some of these numerous job titles (as well as wondering if # 21, poor Natalie Bookey, as the $40,000-a-year, just plain "Staff Assistant" who doesn't seem to "belong to anybody," therefore is picked on and "belongs to everybody" -- "Hey, YOU!"), I think it is still safe to say that never has there been anyone in the White House with such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the facilitation of the First Lady's social life and communicability.

I know you wanted to be president. And, it's true, anyone who really wants that job must really, really want it. But, even given that, you went above and beyond, designing your own version of a presidential seal during the campaign (pale blue and white, if I recall correctly - or was that creme?) and then making sure to hold news pressers two or three times a week from winning the election right up to your inauguration, usually appearing at a podium bearing a sign for the nonexistent "Office of the President-elect" and to the point that your disclaimer "there is only one president at a time" became as much of a mantra as "hope" and "change" were during your campaign. I know you wanted to stay in the limelight, as well as comment on some things, yet avoid commenting on other things, so you had to remind the clamoring press that you weren't the real president yet, but that you were already almost the president and had your appointees to introduce and important things on your mind to talk about. Well, now, finally, you really are the president, so no more need for fake seals or signs. Now you can use the real ones. And I know you haven't had to wait as long, nor gain as much experience, as most who have held that office, but you've just been chaffing at the bit to actually be the president and get started "remaking" America.

I don't know that America needs "remaking," actually, but I do know that our country has problems and needs some "revitalizing." And I know you want to show that you're getting right to work on that. I also know you want to show your base that you're going to fulfill campaign promises and all of us that you're decisive and bold and, well, um, presidential. So far as I know, you may also feel the extra "burden" or "opportunity" of being our first black president and want to do especially well because of that, as well. But, despite having to wait a relatively short time before becoming president and now actually being president, you need to slow down just a little and take a breath or two.

Within just the first few days of your new administration, you've signed a flurry of Executive Orders (EOs). True, you can take fast action on many issues and campaign promises with EOs. Nobody can prevent you from signing them - after all, you're the country's chief executive and they're your orders. You don't have to have anybody's approval, much less wait on them, like you do legislation, to be considered, debated and passed by Congress in their often excruciatingly slow and sometimes painfully procedural and dysfunctionally "deliberative" process.

But, even there, in the legislative arena, you've moved quickly. You've already signed major legislation about women's fair pay in the workplace and your so-called stimulus plan, which is the largest transfer of taxpayer money not only in our country's history but in the history of the world. You've moved quickly to more than triple our nation's deficit in about the first 40 days of your new administration, compared to the deficit caused by former president George Bush over a period of eight years! And he was funding a global war on two fronts and dealing with the costs of two major hurricanes, Katrina and Gustav, as well as widespread forest fires in California, along with a few other things.

But axioms become axioms because there's truth in them, a truth which has been tested over time and found valid again and again. And one axiom is: Haste makes waste. Years ago when I was an Army instructor, small group facilitator and trainer, and student faculty advisor and field supervisor at an Army leadership, management and organizational effectiveness school, one of the classes I taught was on executive decision-making, planning and plan execution. One of the teaching points I used was a simple diagram devised hundreds of years ago by an Italian scholar (whose name I can't recall right now - Alfredo Something) which demonstrated the planning-to-plan-execution principle that longer and more careful planning before executing a plan actually reduces overall plan implementation time, and is therefore not only more effective but efficient in the long run. In other words, if you take a little longer to ensure you're implementing a good (effective) plan, rather than rushing to implement a quick (efficient) plan, you will reduce overall planning-to-implementation time, which will be more effective and efficient in the end. Your planning time will be longer, but your execution time will be shorter, cleaner and you won't have to spend even more time in "adjusting," "fixing" and "do-overs."

But, I already knew about this principle in another form because my dad, who was raised a red dirt, Georgia farm boy and had to stop his formal education after high school to work on the family farm, but who always had what I came to respect as uncommon common sense, used to remind me: "Son, you can take the time to do something right the first time, or you can take longer to do it over and over until you get it right."

So, Mr. President, you might want to slow down a little bit and take a breath now and then. Oh, I know you want to "push your agenda." And I know there are political reasons for doing that as fast as you can, on as many fronts as you can - from doing so much so fast that it's harder for the press, the opposition in Congress and the American people to keep up with; to rewarding those who helped elect you, like the Democratic Left, anti-war activists, Big Labor, ACORN, Planned Parenthood, the Hollywood glitterati, and the liberal mainstream media chattering class; to striking while the iron is hot and using our current economic crisis as a reason, excuse and political cover to scare, bully and cajole everyone into going along with you. I understand all that.

But, you also need to remember that you not only have to push your agenda, reward your supporters and move quickly, especially on the economic crisis, but that you also owe it to the American people at large to take the time to get it right. Don't confuse brashness and boldness, promises with principles, fast for functional, deliberation as dysfunctional, payback as performance, or energy and eagerness with effectiveness and efficiency. In the military, one's superiors sometimes insist that you do things not only well but "like yesterday." So, as I sometimes had to stand up to my superiors in the Army and tell them, "Sir, if you want this done fast, we can do that, but it won't be pretty." So, just remember another axiom, Mr. President: Usually, if you want something quick and dirty, that's exactly the way you'll get it - both quick and dirty.

I think perhaps he should. I mean, it would fit right in line with his trying to reincarnate Abraham Lincoln, seemingly in every way he can possibly think of. And Lincoln had a beard. Well, not at first, but after that little girl told him he should, he did.

Those in the fawning liberal MSM have sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly drawn comparisons between Obama and Lincoln. True, both were/are tall and lanky. True, both "came from" Illinois. True, both were lawyers, Lincoln self-taught and Obama a Harvard Law School graduate. True, both were/are good physical specimens, one fully capable of splitting logs to make split-rail fences and the other capable of a good, competitive game of pickup B-ball. True, both were/are good debaters and orators. However, whereas Obama often uses soaring rhetoric and a plethora of words to say little of real substance, Lincoln used plainer language and very few words to convey volumes of meaning. No matter what speech Obama has ever given, he has never even come close to the sparseness yet beauty of language and meaning of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and probably never shall. But then, nobody has.

But, given all that, I have never seen another presidential candidate and now president-elect and soon-to-be president do more to identify himself with a past president as Obama has done vis-a-vis Lincoln, and I have been voting in presidential elections since the 1960s.

From beginning his presidential run by announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln began, to returning there during the campaign, to frequent self-comparisons with Lincoln, to frequently invoking and citing Lincoln, to recently reenacting Lincoln's train trip to Washington, DC, to selecting Lincoln's Bible upon which to swear his inaugural oath of office, Obama has tried to identify with and, one might say, "become" the modern day Lincoln. (Well, when he's not pretending, again enabled by the liberal MSM, to be FDR, instead.) Now, it's one thing to have a past president as your idol and hero, and I can certainly understand Lincoln being a likely one for Obama, just as I could understand Teddy Roosevelt being one for John McCain, but Obama has gone beyond that, almost pretending to "be" Lincoln reincarnate.

Well, soon-to-be President Obama, that's too much of a stretch for me. Amazingly, even after one of the longest, most contentious and most expensive presidential campaigns in our history, I still don't know who you really are. There have been so many good stories, yet so many bad stories; so much about your good qualities, yet so much about your questionable associations; so little real hard vetting by the MSM but so much spin about your past, both distant and recent.

So, to put it even more bluntly than Democratic candidate Lloyd Bentsen put it to Republican candidate Dan Quayle in their 1988 televised vice presidential debate, when Bentsen reminded Quayle that he was no Jack Kennedy, Mr. Obama, you ain't no Lincoln. Nor are you FDR or JFK or MLK.

Right now, on this Martin Luther King Day, January 19, 2009, you are president-elect Barack Hussein Obama. And tomorrow you will become President Barack Hussein Obama, our 44th and our first black president. And, as we have for all of our presidents, we will come to know who you really are by the way you govern. Not by campaign rhetoric or promises. That's the easy part. Not by being identified or identifying yourself with another president, or presidents. That's all just so much more hype and spin.

You will enter office as the beneficiary of a mostly compliant, even enabling, MSM and the recipient of an historically unprecedented, gracious and helpful transition from the outgoing Bush administration -- much different from that which Bush received from Clinton staffers who actually destroyed or stole government property on their way out the door, for which they were never punished nor made to repay the American taxpayers. You will enter office with your own Democratic Party controlling Congress and also as a beneficiary of a time when you have the good will of the American people, albeit somewhat driven by economic fear, to succeed. For many reasons, no patriotic American should wish you anything less than success.

Yes, you will enter office during difficult times for our nation, both domestically and abroad, with a slumping economy, a war on terror on two fronts and unknown threats and challenges ahead. But, as yet, you will have nothing to deal with compared to Lincoln's saving of the Union and healing of the national psyche, nor FDR's failure in dealing with the Great Depression but successfully waging WWII, nor JFK's challenges in dealing with Cuba and Kruschev and the Cold War with the USSR as "the other" superpower, nor MLK's long, principled and arduous journey of civil rights for all Americans, for which he died but which has likely made your election possible.

You have an opportunity which is historic on many levels. How you govern is how we shall know, and judge, you -- many of us day-by-day in the short term, and historically in the long-term. Will you be a one-term or a two-term president? Will you, can you, make the hope you've promised really the hope we all can believe in? Will the change you've promised actually be the change we need as a nation? Will you, one day, be judged to have been a president, not like Lincoln or FDR or JFK, nor a leader like MLK, but one historic enough to also be referred to in the future by only your initials -- BHO? Only how you govern and the legacy you leave behind will answer those questions.

But, in the meantime, as you currently strive so hard to identify with Lincoln, you might want to consider the growing a beard idea. After all, beards are making a comeback in our society. I don't mean those scruffy-looking-I-forgot-to-shave-or-just-think-I'm-too-cool pitiful attempts at beards sported by some TV stars, boy band members, singers and male models. I mean a real, manly looking beard. Some TV commentators and guests and even some politicians are wearing them now, or at least goatees or mustaches. Heck, I wear one and some people say it makes me look distinguished, although that may be simply because it's salt-and-pepper and covers part of my face. Of course, we know you would have to check the beard thing with Michelle first and that might be the end of it right there, but it's just a suggestion.

Well, after only posting one entry around Thanksgiving since our historic presidential election, now I'm b-a-a-a-c-k.

Part of my absence has been due to a variety of Thanksgiving and Christmas "holiday stuff," but I guess you could also say that I'm a "recovering" Republican who has been going through my own 12-step program and have now at least moved beyond disbelief and denial over the outcome of the presidential election. So, I'm making progress, and it's once again time to take up the fight for conservative principles -- down but not down for the count and certainly not out.

Well, Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. American Electorate, you've gone and done it now -- elected Barack Obama, one of the most liberal and least experienced candidates ever, as our next president. I hope you knew what you were doing, and I hope he knows what he's doing, but we'll see. Notice I said he is liberal and inexperienced, not that he might not govern more from the middle or that he is the least qualified. I don't think we know yet how qualified he is. He is clearly an intelligent and talented man, but we'll have to wait and see if he's actually up to the job. As of January 20th, he will become our 44th president and although I certainly didn't support or vote for him, I wish him well and hope he's successful -- for all our sakes.

We may not know within his "first 100 days," which seemingly originated with FDR's flurry of legislation during his first 100 days in 1933 and has since become a standard artifice of the pol-dits (political pundits) and media to "focus" attention on how, for example, the Congress or the President is initially doing. But we will surely know before 2010, in time to "adjust" a too-liberal, tax-and-spend Democratic Congress, as well as send a clear message to a too-liberal Barack Obama, if that is the case, that he may not enjoy a second term.

After the election, I thought about removing the "Veterans for McCain" sticker from the rear window of my SUV. You know, just so I wouldn't have to put up with Obama supporters crowing to me about my guy losing and their guy winning, etc., etc., ad nauseum. But then I thought, no, wait until 2010 -- because, by then, you may be able to point to that sticker and say, especially to Obama supporters, "See, I told you so" or "It's not my fault - I voted for the 'other guy.'"

But, like I said, we'll wait and watch and see. For now, good luck, Mr. President-elect.