The president gets into campaign mode

WASHINGTON — I sat across from President Obama in the White House last Friday as he fielded questions from 10 newspaper columnists. The president's signature calm tone and even demeanor were on display. But so was his campaign mode as he thoughtfully, meticulously and — in Obama fashion — politely took Republicans off at the knees on issues ranging from the reforms of health care and the financial industry and taxes.

It's about time. The administration has done a horrible job communicating its efforts, leaving it to GOP amnesiacs to spin a narrative that makes it seem as though Obama came into office, launched two wars and blew up Wall Street.

We sat in the federalist-style Roosevelt Room beneath a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt looking down from atop a horse. I'm reminded that even as critics deride Obama's youth, he and the revered Roosevelt ascended to the presidency at young ages — Obama at 47, Roosevelt at 42.

I predict when Obama arrives in Seattle Thursday to add firepower to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray's tight battle against Republican Dino Rossi, he'll again skewer the opposition. Even as Democrats around the country duck and dodge from Obama and his controversial health-care and financial reforms, he is popular in the American West.

Obama stoutly defends his health-care overhaul. The largely deficit-neutral effort moved 40 million people without coverage away from expensive emergency-room care toward an efficient system buttressed by insurance.

Where was the battle cry "to take our country back" during President George W. Bush's $500 billion overhaul of Medicare, a cost that landed straight onto the federal tab.

Obama is asked about the fracturing of the coalition that brought him into office, an unprecedented band of blacks, Hispanics, Asians and young whites. Some political watchers say disappointed liberals may stay home Election Day.

Tensions about how to resolve a financial meltdown and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression stretched the fabric of the tent, but the fraying around the edges isn't the surprise. The surprise is how the fabric still holds.

The president says that's because most people are attuned to the hopeful signs.

"What we've done is take an economy that was shrinking by 6 percent and gotten to the point where it's now growing again," Obama said.

Add to that nine straight months of private-sector job growth. A frail upward tick, nonetheless a vast improvement over the 5 million jobs lost in the months before and after Obama took office. During the presidential campaign, critics derided Obama by calling him the Chosen One. Now it looks like they believed he would turn water into wine, or at least a moribund economy into an athletic one. He responds with a line he credits to Vice President Joseph Biden.

"Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative."

That might have been a winning comparison a month ago, but in the weeks since, anonymous Republicans have flooded TV airwaves with attack ads. Obama and Democrats are criticized for reckless spending, while undisclosed Republican donors and private businesses write out million-dollar checks. Go figure.

"Frankly, I would feel very confident about our position right now if it weren't for the fact that these third-party independent groups, funded by corporate special interests and run by Republican operatives, without disclosing where that money is coming from, are outspending our candidates in some cases five-to-one, 10-to-one," Obama says.

Republicans may argue they're leveling a playing field well traversed by labor unions and other Democratic funders, but credit the latter for having the courage to operate under full disclosure. Blame the implosion of campaign-finance reform on the U.S. Supreme Court's profoundly wrong ruling banning limitations on campaign spending.

"Ultimately, this election is going to be decided on a race-by-race basis, district by district," Obama says. He has hit the road to help campaign but says "it's going to be hand-to-hand combat taking place in various districts that is probably going to make the biggest difference."

And so the president, his wife Michelle and Biden will try to be everywhere at once. A question that won't be answered until Nov. 3 is whether these reinforcements showed up too late.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com