It is not simply that this is Mr. Brown's third term as governor, but that he will be confronting the same budget issues that have vexed California political leaders for more than a decade.
So when Mr. Obama meets with other world leaders in London, he will be confronting a philosophical divide, with the United States on the defensive not just on economic issues like trade and financial regulation but also on a variety of national security and diplomatic matters.
Soon, he will be confronted with the conundrum of two Thomas-era products and growing assets, Nate Robinson and David Lee.
It hasn't occurred to him that one day, in the not too distant future, he will be confronted with the same dilemmas as Mac and Kelly.
Over the following five days, he will be confronted with the full extent of India's failure to keep pace with its neighbour.
And he will take over a job for which consensus is good but only when measured against results, and in which he will be confronted with the need to make hard and sometimes quick decisions.
When Mr. Verniero appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, he will be confronted with all the painful questions of the racial profiling in what promises to be a spectacle of officials taking aim at one of their own.
On Monday, Mo Yan will receive this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, and he will be confronted with a problem not of his making but one that he no longer avoid: Will he speak up for his fellow Nobel Prize winner, the Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, who is serving an eleven-year sentence for subversion?
While unconscious, he will be confronted by the ghosts of mum, Kathy Mitchell, aunty, Pat Evans (although whether her voluminous taste in earrings has been allowed to continue in the afterlife is yet to be confirmed), ex-wife Cindy and daughter Lucy, whose murder earlier this year is still to be solved in one of the most drawn-out storylines in TV history.
At the same time, he will be confronted with deep tensions over the conduct of Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, whose aggressive tactics are seen by Afghan officials as responsible for many of the American mistakes that have resulted in the deaths of civilians.
In other words, he will be confronted with a plenitude of information and a multitude of opinions on a specific health-related problem.
