(FirstRead) It was a surprisingly busy first full week of 2013, especially since Congress is out and the White House had all of Washington to itself. The Obama White House circled the wagons around its Cabinet nominations, lowered expectations on guns, raised expectations on pulling out ALL U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2014 and finally, “laid the groundwork for the next fiscal fight with the threats of a government shutdown and a $1 trillion platinum coin.” What a week – and we’re just 10 days before Obama’s inauguration. OBAMA BACK TO WORK President Obama put aside the joys of balmy Hawaii last Sunday, returning to Washington to resume the political battles inside the Beltway. Among his first order of business was restocking his Cabinet. LINCOLN During the 2008 campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama spoke of his admiration for President Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” approach to picking his Cabinet, referring to the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin (coincidence, the movie based on that book – Lincoln – just received 12 nominations to lead the Oscar field). Obama later selected his No. 1 Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as his secretary of State. National Journal writes that, “what Obama is now assembling is more of a Team of Mentors, a group of old lions of the Senate who, along with Biden, helped to shape Obama’s worldview during his brief stint as a freshman senator before he ran for president.” RECURING THEME: LINCOLN On Mon., Jan. 21 — the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and 50 years after the birth of the Civil Rights movement — President Obama will be sworn in using a Bible that belonged to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Lincoln Bible, which Obama used in 2009.
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