Obama Versus Obama

Who's right?

"If my poll numbers are low, then I'm cool and cerebral and cold and detached. If my poll numbers are high, well, he's calm and reasoned," Obama scoffed. "So that's -- that's the filter through which a lot of this stuff is interpreted."

So who are these critics, so easily buffeted and swayed by the poll numbers and Obama's rising and falling political fortunes? Well, one appears to be the president himself.

Speaking just five days earlier, in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama said one mistake he made in 2009 was seeming too detached from voters.

"I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here...that people will get it," Obama said in the January 20 interview. "And I think that, you know, what they've ended up seeing is this feeling of remoteness and detachment where, you know, there's these technocrats up here, these folks who are making decisions. Maybe some of them are good, maybe some aren't, but do they really get us and what we're going through? And I think that I can do a better job of that."