Obama After One Year: The Loneliest Job

Obama is not the first President to find out how hard it is to make — or keep — friends in the White House

Gerard Dubois for TIME

There is a moment in every White House tenure when you can practically see the President walk away from everyone he's known, everyone he's been, because he now has thoughts and fears and hopes that no one else can fathom. Franklin Roosevelt faced a collapsing economy. Harry Truman had to decide whether to drop the atom bomb. John F. Kennedy found himself invading Cuba. I wonder when Obama's moment came, as he splashed into office through a sea of red ink, ended his first year with a national-security nightmare and in between set out to pass a health care reform bill...

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