This Obama guy is kind of an enigma, huh?

The president who will lay out his reasons for seeking a second term is an odd political duck, a politician who does not appear to like people. Among the people he seems to like the least are his fellow politicians, including members of the Senate with whom he once served. The other day I talked with one of them — a Democrat — who rarely hears from Obama. This senator has zero respect for the president’s political abilities. The commander in chief is not — pardon the cloying term — a people person. …

So what we have is the Obama Paradox. Here is a man who is supremely gifted as an orator but dreadful as a schmoozer. His keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic convention put him on the national stage, and within four years, he was his party’s nominee. His speeches during the 2008 campaign caused the young, among others, to swoon. That July, he spoke to what seemed like half of Germany at a Berlin rally, and a bit more than a year later he won the Nobel Peace Prize based on nothing more than his rhetoric. He could make a fantastic demagogue. He chose, however, to make a crummy politician.