In short, the new political environment in Washington and the prospect of a daunting re-election bid have
forced an intensely private public figure out of his shell. The president who will address a television audience of upwards of 50 million people in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night is mingling more with groups that number in the dozens or less. One form of communication he has always been comfortable with; the other he has been slow to embrace…

“It seems he’s getting the idea that all this socializing is not such a bad thing,” said Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary. “The biggest missing ingredient in the functioning of Washington is trust, and you can’t build trust if you don’t know someone. And getting to know someone is more than just reading them your talking points from a briefing book. So I think this effort to socialize and this effort to build personal relationships is really about restoring some basic functionality to Washington, D.C. It’s fundamentally important.”…

The White House says Obama will continue to get more personal, with more mix-and-mingle events and perhaps lunches with Republican leadership. “I think you’ll see more of them, sure,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday, adding that before the November election “we didn’t do enough of that.”