Yup-talk about training wheels. The guys is simply a figurehead otherwise he wouldn't be surrounded by so many Clinton retreads. I don't care what anyone says - the Clintons are still in control on a variety of levels due to the entrenchment of eight years of hiring and firing.
It wouldn't surprise me if Clinton has him by the short hairs. Somebody mucked around in Obama's passport file in the fall of 2007, and it may as well have been a Clinton initiative in opposition research. They probably hit the mother lode, and are using it the best way they know how.
Also, last time I saw a lineup of 0bama's cabinet, there was a surprising lack of African-Americans, and a surfeit of Clintonista "retreads" as you so accurately put it.