Is Obama's Search for 'Common Ground' Real?

In the stagecraft of statecraft, Barack Obama keeps searching for his leading role.

Throughout much of his first year as president, he continued to portray himself as he had in his campaign for the White House. The cool, cerebral, controlled figure of the hustings moved into the Oval Office -- but after a few months his approval ratings started to plummet and critics began to question his approach.

Could a "cool" temperament appear frosty when some fire and passion seemed more appropriate? Was "cerebral" too much like an academic seminar of endless, inconclusive conversation?

When Obama first spoke in public about the failed terrorist act near Detroit at Christmas, his calmness might have been reassuring, but it also raised doubts about how seriously he was taking the planned attack. Shortly afterwards, Obama became more animated and assertive, and during January his presidential rhetoric took on a range of different tones.

In talking about the banks and their astronomical bonuses, he came across as a populist pitted against the forces of greed. Then he assumed the pose of a fighter, duking it out with entrenched interests and institutions on behalf of those less powerful.

More recently, Obama-a tough sell as a populist or as a fighter-has modulated his voice and adopted another approach. Since the State of the Union, he's been trying to position himself as an aisle-crossing, let's-all-get-along consensus-seeker.

For Obama, appealing for bipartisanship is not only recognition of the altered political landscape after Scott Brown's Senate victory in Massachusetts last month but also a return to how the public first perceived him as a national figure in 2004.

In his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention that year, he challenged the notion of "Red States and Blue States," noting that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America-there is the United States of America."

During his first State of the Union address a couple weeks ago, he took on partisan gridlock directly, saying "what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We can't wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side-a belief that if you lose, I win.

"Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, no matter how malicious, is just part of the game. But it's precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it's sowing further division among our citizens, further distrust in our government."

Just as tellingly, two days later, he told Republican House members at their Baltimore retreat that Americans don't "want more gridlock. I don't think they want more partisanship. I don't think they want more obstruction. They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That's not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they're grappling with every single day."

Obama's calls for more -- well, at least some -- bipartisanship might cause heartburn for his Democratic base, especially the ideologically-minded left. But such rhetoric could help bring back independent swing voters who flocked to the GOP in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races and also in the Massachusetts Senate vote.

The most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey reported that a stunning 93 percent of those polled agreed with the statement "There is too much partisan fighting between Democrats and Republicans and very little cooperation."

With the perception of polarization that pronounced, a politician viewed as trying to bridge partisan divisions could stand apart from -- and even above -- the crowd and force the other side to change course or at least conduct itself differently.

Appealing as a bipartisan spirit might sound, there's potential danger if actions don't follow words -- or if the words seem hollow and calculated. Should the public see such calls as what you might term "a wedge tactic" -- a ploy without substance that's executed primarily for self-interested advantage -- it could be viewed as just another play in today's political game, with deeper polarization a likely result.

For the moment, though, the president seems intent on making a pitch to Republicans that might improve his own standing and that of his party. At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, he even returned to political terrain he hasn't occupied for several months. Twice during his 15 minute-long talk, he invoked the phrase "to find common ground" in remarks that focused on the need for civility.

Whether any "common ground" can be staked out in the current political environment is a prime concern the president confronts as he tries to regain his footing and to find his role for leadership. Said another way: Who is the real Barack Obama?

Robert Schmuhl is Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Chair of American Studies and Journalism at the University of Notre Dame, where he directs the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics & Democracy.