Confirmations of Barack Obama's Cabinet him "very, very competent" and "the right guy" for Secretary of the Treasury. On January 26, 2009, the U.S. Senate confirmed Geithner's appointment by a vote of 60–34. Geithner was sworn in as Treasury Secretary by Vice President Joe Biden and witnessed by President Obama. Geithner left the administration at the end of January 25, 2013. On January 10, 2013, Jacob Lew, then the President's Chief of Staff was nominated as the replacement for retiring Treasury Secretary Geithner, to serve in President Obama's second term. Lew's nomination was confirmed by the full Senate on Wednesday, February 27, 2013 by a
Foreign policy of the Barack Obama administration Putin was a resurgent and perilous adversary; and this dismissiveness on Russia ″filter[ed] its way down″. During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama advocated a phased redeployment of troops out of Iraq within 16 months of being sworn in as president. In order to accomplish this Obama stated that he would, based on the conditions on the ground, redeploy between one and two battalions a month. Some of the forces returned to the U.S., while others were redeployed as part of a focus on the broader region including Afghanistan and Pakistan to confront terrorism. Obama was in office for