Does this picture on Politico.com say it all?  Barack Obama looks like he is in The White House executive training program, as Bill Clinton takes and holds the lectern.  This picture symbolizes the biggest problem we have in our government today.  Barack Obama is a bystander.   It’s a win/win for Clinton.  He gets to fulfill his dream of serving another term!

Here’s the story behind the photo:

Former President Bill Clinton has gotten the last word again.

Appearing with President Barack Obama on Friday to promote $4 billion in green building investments, Clinton stole the spotlight by lingering after the event’s conclusion to answer a reporter’s shouted question about advice he gives Obama on the economy.

At first, Obama tried to brush off the question from Fox News’s Ed Henry. “Oh, he gives me advice all the time,” Obama said as staffers shouted for the travel press pool to head for the exits.

But Clinton instead glided to the podium with the presidential seal, folded one leg behind the other and launched into a nearly two-minute response about the economic benefits of retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency — one of the key components of his Clinton Global Initiative.

“I just want to, I’ll say again, this announcement today, the reason you should be encouraged by this, you can run the numbers and see how many jobs,” Clinton said, with Obama standing to the side, hands clasped in front of himself.

Clinton also explained that he’d met earlier Friday with Obama and about 60 business and labor officials who “represent trillions of dollars in potential investment.”

“The president, by doing this, can trigger pools of investment so that you can have more buildings like this,” Clinton said.

Noting rural communities like his new hometown of Chappaqua, N.Y., Clinton added: “Every little county has got one bonded contractor. That bonded contractor can guarantee to every public school, every state, county and local building, every little office building … what the savings are going to be.”

The scene had some similarities to the impromptu news conference Obama and Clinton held together last December at the White House amid a heated tax cut debate with Republicans. After jointly fielding questions for a few minutes, Obama left Clinton to respond to reporters for an additional 30 minutes.

On Friday, Clinton kept his remarks a bit shorter, explaining that he had signed up to Obama’s “Better Building Initiative” because of the immediate energy efficiency gains and job benefits that come with overhauling pipes, windows and floors.

The current president and former president spoke on the 12th floor of a commercial building just blocks from the White House that’s undergoing the energy retrofits — they were surrounded by bare concrete floors and exposed pipes and beams.

Under the new program, Obama committed $2 billion from federal agencies over the next 24 months to go toward hiring contractors to perform energy efficiency and other green upgrades at federal facilities. The private sector also will come up with $2 billion that covers up to 1.6 billion square feet of commercial and independent property and involving roughly 300 manufacturing plants.

“Making our buildings more energy-efficient is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest ways for us to create jobs, save money and cut down on harmful pollutants,” Obama said. “It is a trifecta, which is why we have labor and business behind it.”

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Filed under: Economy, Featured, Inside The KC, Politics by Sonja Eddings Brown, Dec 3, 2011