The magic of Barack Obama’s mythopoeic come-from-behind campaign in 2008 has given way to the grim reality of governing a conflicted country, one whose entire economic model has been found wanting by the greatest recession since the 1930s.

And, as Obama stays the course with some of George Bush’s symbolic overseas policies – continuing drone strikes in Pakistan, and largely maintaining status quo on the human rights of “war on terror” detainees – the disenchantment of many American progressives has veered into bitterness.

But as the president loses touch with much of his base, the very man once derided by his presidential rivals as a phony-Jesus, peace-and-love political cream puff is forging a new public persona: Barack Obama, the angry president.

And it’s not without good political reason.

The country itself is angry and not interested in “change” and “hope” anymore. The language that sells, the rhetoric that can best get Americans off the couch and into the voting booth, is all about being “mad as hell” and accusing your opponent of betraying the country.

So the “love” president is learning to paint with another palette of emotions: not quite the Big Government paranoia of his opponents on the Right, but certainly anger and fear.

“I’ll fight with everything I’ve got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street,” Obama said recently in his weekly radio address.

Social Security is the pension system in the US, a cherished programme created in 1935. George Bush suggested it should be privatised, and invested on Wall Street, while he was president.

read on… http://blogs.aljazeera.net/americas/2010/08/22/barack-obama-wheres-love