Who is Obama ?? : Obama is rational, reasonable, nonconfrontational, a reluctant populist, a brilliant intellectual and professor of constitutional law. "Now, you can call this class warfare all you want", Obama said, responding to a GOP line of attack

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A studious man of reason has to embrace a responsible and mild form of populism to get ahead with his vision of a beautiful future for America ( and the visions of many millions of Americans ).

I have no doubts that Obama is the Greatest Political Phenomenon of our lives : a Great Man and a Great President.

POLITICO.COM
President Obama, reluctant populist
By GLENN THRUSH
January 25, 2012

President Obama, reluctant populist

Some excerpts :

But it was his Theodore Roosevelt-inspired populist broadside delivered last month in Osawatomie, Kan., that marked the most dramatic shift in tone. Here was a president trying to align himself with disaffected voters fuming at the establishment — after three years of running the establishment — and under attack for bank bailouts and a huge, widely unpopular health care law.

In 2008, historian Michael Cohen, writing in The Wall Street Journal, credited Obama with creating a “new style of populism, an affirming and unifying message that offers a stark contrast to the divisive messages of the past.”

This year, Cohen sees a 180-degree turn. “When you look at his Kansas speech and compare it to the things he said in 2008, the policy proposals are virtually the same, but the rhetoric, it’s just completely different,” said Cohen, a fellow for the Century Foundation and author of a book on presidential speeches. “He’s calling out bogeymen, he’s talking about who is guilty. It’s a totally different message. He’s channeling his inner Huey Long. It’s a risk, and the reason he’s doing it is simply that he has no choice.”

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At this point, the mood of the country is so roiled — and Romney’s vulnerabilities as a millionaire businessman so obvious — that Obama’s reelection chances may hinge on tapping a growing anger over income inequality and issues of economic fairness, Democrats believe.

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“The viability of the middle class, and the opportunity to get ahead, has been a central cause of Obama’s life,” Obama’s senior campaign adviser David Axelrod told POLITICO.

“It’s why he passed on more lucrative jobs after college to work with unemployed workers in the shadow of closed steel mills. It’s why he passed on even more lucrative law and corporate offers when he graduated from Harvard Law School, and returned to Chicago to represent people in employment discrimination cases,” Axelrod said.

“It’s something he spoke to throughout his Senate race, including his convention speech. He talked at every stop in 2007 and 2008 about the pervasive sense that ‘the American dream is slipping away’ and what we needed to do about it. And at every stop, he railed against budget-busting tax breaks for people who didn’t need them and weren’t even asking for them.”

“So, no, as someone who has known and worked with Obama for a long time, I don’t think it’s a valid premise” that Obama is only now embracing populism, Axelrod said.

Still, Tuesday’s speech was a vindication of sorts for Obama’s liberal critics, who have urged him to ditch the bipartisan deficit-cutting and focus on creating jobs for the poor and the working and middle classes. A CBS/New York Times poll released Tuesday showed that 55 percent of voters — and 70 percent of Democrats — think the rich aren’t paying enough taxes.

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“He understands that the American people are profoundly concerned that we have not only the most unequal distribution of income than any other country on earth and that inequality is greater than at any time in the last 50 years,” Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent - Vermont) said. “They see it as immoral. … The Occupy Wall Street movement got the president, and everybody else, talking about this.”

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After internal debate about the importance of the Occupy movement and how to respond to the challenge, Axelrod and Obama White House consigliere David Plouffe agreed to sharpen Obama’s attack. Axelrod — more than anyone responsible for the president’s above-the-fray brand — had regretted Obama’s tough partisan approach to stumping for Democratic candidates in 2010.

But he sees the populist message as central to Obama’s prospects this time, Democrats close to the campaign say.

The trial balloon came on Dec. 7, in Kansas, when Obama declared for the first time that saving the middle class is the “defining issue of our time.”

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Obama's supporters often cite a 2005 speech at Knox College in rural Illinois as his first and most memorable remarks on the issue of inequality — accusing the GOP of practicing “social Darwinism” on the poor and the working class.

But Democrats, even those who sharply criticized Obama’s budget-cutting last year, seem encouraged by his more active embrace of populism.

“The president has always been most comfortable framing this issue in terms of fairness,” said Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Bernstein was first drawn to Obama six-plus years ago after watching his Knox College speech. “His instincts are right that fairness is the most appealing way to address the issue with the larger public.”

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