Without an election to worry about, the prez looks like ... well, a prez

The Real Obama

By CHARLES M. BLOW, NYT

Is this the real Barack Obama? I hope so. I like this one.

The president used Tuesday’s State of the Union address to detail a vision of America’s future, and his second term, in which the country is not in perpetual war, government plays an expansive role, Congressional obstruction is named and shamed and he is bold and unapologetically progressive.

This is how politicians who needn’t worry about re-election look: more like themselves.

The speech was a full-throated rebuke and disavowal of the conservative argument that government must shrink and cower. It was a rebuke of the economic theory that a government’s role in revival is to retreat and lift regulations. It was an embrace of the country’s growth and diversity and an elevation of those down on their luck. And it was a bring-it-on gesture to the gun lobby and the politicians who fear it.

He aimed much of the speech at a still-struggling middle class, but it was also an open appeal to the poor — those with jobs and without.

(More here.)