Chief Justice John Roberts administers the oath of office to President Barack Obama. (official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson) “Hope drowned in shadows emerges fiercely splendid–– boldly angelic.” --Aberjhani, from The River of Winged Dreams One of the political jabs with which critics of Barack Obama used to attack him during his first run for the U.S. presidency was that his proposed platform was more rhetorical poetry than political substance. That charge has been largely reversed at this 2013 beginning of his hard-won second term. The cry now––mostly from those frequently described as extremist conservatives, Tea Partiers, and the “ New Plutocrats ”–– is that the poet in President Obama has allowed power to exert its corruptive influence. It has, they charge, caused him to imagine that he is “a king” in a country where monarchy is not the law of the land. The supposed evidence is his successful passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ...