Merry Christmas to all from Oakley, Annie, Buddy, and the team that brings you The Washington Note! — Steve Clemons

Had Ted Kennedy been alive today, either Ben Nelson would not have been able to undermine women’s health care equities and move his anti-abortion beliefs into national consequence or Joe Lieberman would not have been able to get included in the health care bill nearly whatever the big insurers wanted — no matter how much…

(This post also appears at The Race for Iran.) Jay Solomon reports that Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry is considering what would be the highest-level American visit to Tehran in thirty years. The White House has endorsed such a trip.

President Obama did a very good job, in my view, outlining in this NPR interview the positives in the health care package that has not been completely ironed out in Congress, but in his terms, is 95% there.

Over at the Lowy Institute‘s blog, The Interpreter, I found a link to a Boston Globe assembly of the 50 best news photographs of the decade. I’ve added the photo above as a reminder of the “hope” that many people have for what President Obama can deliver in the next decade.

The New America Foundation/American Strategy Program and The American Interest are teaming up to host a a policy forum in snow-recovering Washington D.C. today to assess the Obama administration’s performance on major national security and domestic priorities after one year in office.

My friend and colleague Nicholas Thompson — a senior editor at Wired, a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, and the grandson of strategist and Kennan-thorn Paul Nitze — has a terrific new book out about the personal and intellectual rivalry and relationship between Nitze and George Kennan.

Wow. David Axelrod acknowledged this statement today from David Gregory on Meet the Press: [Barack Obama] supported the public option. He did not fight for it till the end of the day.

President Obama demonstrated his work-the-situation prowess in Copenhagen in which he molded a meeting planned with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who may have been trying to duck Obama, into a five way chat between the leaders of China, Brazil, India, South Africa and the United States. When Obama is on, he really is on.

My friend Andrew Sullivan gave me permission long ago to let me use his “View from my Window” feature — and publish interesting photos sent in by others and post my own. This is the scene outside my front door. Cold, white, lots of it.