One of the differences between any future Republican minority candidate and Obama is you would have to assume the GOP hopeful will have no choice but to run as who he or she is, since any attempt to run as some sort of stealth candidate would quickly be revealed and trumpeted by the big media.

In contrast, Obama ran not only as a stealth candidate, but as a non-threatening one. He didn’t say what he really believed except by accident, while at the same time his wonkish personality kept both Democrats during the primary and general election voters from fleeing to Hillary or McCain, as a more confrontational African-American liberal Democratic candidate who didn’t hide his beliefs would have done.

Obama can change the focus of his efforts from what he said during the election and what he’s doing as president, but he can’t change his personality — two years of campaigning would have revealed that sooner or later. So he’s more liberal than what the swing votes hoped for, yet outside of challenging conservatives when his special interest groups are all united behind him, he’s loathe to challenge either the far left or the Blue Dogs of his party directly, let alone the leaders of the Taliban, Iran, Russia and other foreign powers. He got all the way to the White House by voting ‘present’ kicking the can down the road and letting others do the hard work while he takes the credit, and is getting frustrated now that there’s no one left to hand off the hard jobs to for at least the next 3 1/2 years.