5 more observations on what the bin Laden Operation says about the Obama Operation

Reading through the various detailed accounts, and keeping in mind that we are still learning new things and unlearning things we thought we knew barely a day ago, I am struck by the following aspects of the affair:

• This clearly marks that we are in the post-Gates era. Obama stuck his toe in the Rubicon when he over-ruled his superstar secretary of defense to launch the Libya operation. He crossed over to the other side when he decided to do the SEAL strike rather than the bombing strike recommended by Gates. The baton of "most influential security voice" has passed from Gates to someone else, perhaps to his successor, Panetta, who ran the military operation.
• This was also clearly a post-Clinton choice. Obama took the riskier option, the one with a much higher potential downside, rather than the "safe" choice that would assuredly destroy the target with almost no chance of U.S. casualties or fiascos. During the Clinton era, that was how bin Laden was handled, with a risk-minimization strategy of stand-off strikes. Obama’s reliance on drone strikes elsewhere echoes that earlier period, but with this SEAL attack he clearly chose the risk-acceptant option. If the operation had failed, Obama would have been indelibly marked as another Jimmy Carter. It may be an exaggeration, but not by much, to say that he bet his second term on the tactical proficiency of U.S. Special Forces.
• The president showed he could "walk and chew gum." Some early carping noted that the president played a half-round of golf and found time to rehearse his gag skit for the White House Correspondent’s dinner on the margins of this operation. He did more than that: around the same time he was making this momentous decision, he also made the decision to end the nonsense about his birth certificate. Outsiders may complain about the incongruity, but insiders will recognize that this is the reality of the office. The president has to go from an emotionally draining meeting with a grieving widow to a photo-op with Girl Scouts to a meeting where he decides on a political strategy for selling his economic policies to a meeting where he decides whether to authorize a drone strike. Each meeting is the most important meeting of the day (or more) for everyone else in the room except the president. Sometimes the different lines bleed into each other — did the president choose the bin Laden option that offered the best chance of avoiding a "deather" conspiracy theory because he was concurrently dealing with a "birther" conspiracy theory? Other times, the president must compartmentalize.
• The decision parameters played to an Obama strength and away from an Obama weakness. A reporter pointed this out to me: Obama could take his time in making this decision, which allowed him to set up the deliberate process he seems to favor. The administration has not done well when trying to respond to rapidly evolving events visible to everyone else — witness the shaky response to the June 2009 Green Revolution in Iran, the 2011 Arab Spring, and the rapidly collapsing situation in Libya. On the bin Laden strike, Obama did not have unlimited time, but he did have more time and, importantly, more space away from public pressure, to weigh the decision before acting
• Still no sign of the vice-president. I realize I have belabored this point beyond what it probably merits, still it is striking that the tic-toc describes a debate between Obama and Gates, and the steely-eyed resolve of Panetta and Brennan, and merely the fingering of a rosary bead by the vice president. I asked a reporter who participated in an extensive backgrounder and was told that the vice president wasn’t mentioned. What gives?