President Obama has just announced two of the more interesting appointments I’ve seen for as long as I can remember.

What interests me about them is that they come at the same time and they both seem to be the president’s response to critics’ scathing commentary on two simmering controversies.

Susan Rice is leaving her job as United Nations ambassador to become head of the National Security Council. Samantha Power will succeed Rice as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Rice donned the bulls-eye when she began reciting the Obama administration’s talking points after the Benghazi, Libya fire fight in September 2012 that resulted in the deaths of four American diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. Never mind that Rice, as U.N. ambassador, wasn’t privy to all the details leading up to the event. She spoke badly about the events and was left, to borrow a Watergate phrase, to “twist slowly on the wind.” She’s become a target – along with the president and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – of congressional Republican critics ever since.

Her appointment as national security adviser does not need U.S. Senate approval.

Power is a writer and an academic who began her professional career as a journalist, covering the war in Yugoslavia. Why is this so interesting? Because the president and Attorney General Eric Holder are in hot water with the media over the Justice Department’s seizing of Associated Press reporters’ and editors’ phone records. Media executives are still steamed over that one. Power’s appointment appears possibly to be an attempt to head off some of that anger.

Power’s appointment does recover Senate confirmation and she’s expected to be confirmed.

My trick knee is telling that – with these appointments – Barack Obama is going to hunker down for a long and bruising battle with congressional Republicans at least through the 2014 mid-term elections. More than likely, the battle won’t end there, but will end on the day the president’s time in the hot seat concludes.