I'm not sure if this more reflects the strength of Obama's methodological, calm and structured approach to pretty much every issue, or just the benefit of having new eyes look at a problem. Steve Coll writes about changes Obama made to finding Osama when he took office.
"After President Obama took office, he and the new Central Intelligence Agency director, Leon Panetta, reorganized the team of analysts devoted to finding Osama bin Laden. The team worked out of ground-floor offices at the Langley headquarters. There were at least two-dozen of them. Some were older analysts who had been part of the C.I.A.’s various bin Laden-hunting efforts going back to the late nineteen-nineties. Others were newer recruits, too young to have been professionally active when bin Laden was first indicted as a fugitive from American justice.
As they reset their work, the analysts studied other long international fugitive hunts that had ended successfully, such as the operations that led to the death of Medellín Cartel leader Pablo Escobar, in 1993. The analysts asked, Where did the breakthroughs in these other hunts come from? What were the clues that made the difference and how were the clues discovered? They tried to identify “signatures” of Osama bin Laden’s lifestyle that might lead to such a clue: prescription medications that he might purchase, hobbies or other habits of shopping or movement that might give him away."
This is just really heartening. It's how our government should work: look at how we've done things in the past and replicate those techniques. Very heartening.
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