BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Newly inaugurated President Barack H. Obama left the balcony of the west front of the Capitol and paused before going inside. He turned around and looked back down the mall at the throng that had just witnessed him taking the oath of office for his second term. It was a poignant moment. There was this triumphant, historic figure prolonging the experience, taking just one last look at a scene he will never see again, a scene that framed one of the greatest achievements of his lifetime.

That view of the mall, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial from the second floor balcony of the Capitol is spectacular, but it must have been breathtaking for the President, seeing tens of thousands of people all along it, there for him; there to applaud him and his unique place in history.

While the President was filling his memory banks, back at the anchor booth CBS’ Scott Pelley asked his Texas sidekick Bob Scheiffer what he thought of the speech. Scheiffer told us what wasn’t in it, a memorable line, a leave behind, a quotable quote….”Ask not…. There was nothing there that summed up what the speech was about, he said.

But the President didn’t need a gilded frame for this address. The words were clear. They were very political and heavily ideological.

President Obama did not hedge his fealty to a liberal, populist philosophy. They were not the words of the 2008 presidential candidate who portrayed himself as a moderate. Barack Obama was liberated. He was who he is, a full-fledged liberal populist with an agenda that defines him and what he hopes to be his legacy.

He was also a politician with a plan. He made it clear he was taking his agenda directly to the American people, bypassing Congress and those pesky policy makers.

He described his strategy and what the next two years of the Obama Administration will be about with one, single word: “we”.  The President used it 59 times by my count.

We must lead

We cannot cede

We will claim

We will preserve

We will defend

We will renew

We cannot afford delay

We must make hard choices

We must harness new ideas

We are true to our creed

So, who is “we”?

“We, the people,” of course. He used that phrase six times. But make no mistake, not all the people, just the middle class and make no mistake about that either-not all the middle class, just those who think as he thinks and believes as he believes.

We the people didn’t carry the same meaning it does in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. We the people is the over-arching collectivist thematic for a permanent, national mobilization campaign or series of campaigns, created in the image and likeness of the election and re-election campaigns of 2008 and 2012. The Obama team has already announced they are not even terminating the 2012 campaign operation, simply retooling it for White House use.   In Congress, that’s illegal.

President Obama has been a mediocre executive, but a brilliant campaigner, so he’s playing to his strengths. He knows how to pick his messages and make them resonate. He knows how to discredit the opposition without discrediting himself. He knows how to manipulate  the media whose bias in his favor is jaw-dropping. He knows how to raise money, mobilize supporters, and take full advantage of new technology. He is a liberal, populist who knows how to connect with a center-right country, by exploiting the images and illusions of victims and villains, haves and have nots, discriminated and discriminators. He will use those talents, his organization, and his fast financial resources to push his agenda through Congress.

The President apparently doesn’t intend to make the mistakes he made in the first term,  by trying to govern. He is mediocre at governing and a lousy negotiator. He achieved sufficient success in his first two years with a heavily Democratic Congress, a love affair with the media, and a reservoir of public support,  but when faced with the realities of a national conservative rebellion against his first-term accomplishments, he caved. He seemed lost and unable to grasp what a divided government required of him.

He failed to negotiate in good faith when he had the chance with Speaker John Boehner. He painted himself into corners on tax and deficit issues, and failed to respond to the growing reality that his stimulus package wasn’t enough to rescue the economy. By the middle of 2011, by his own admission, he decided to chuck governing and go back to doing what he does do well, campaigning. He pretty much shut down the government, turned out the lights, closed the doors  and hit the campaign trail full time. It was instructive that the two people closest to him on the inauguration platform were campaign operatives, Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod.

The bedrock of the new Obama has three dynamics.

One, he seems convinced that the 2012 electorate gave him a powerful mandate to govern how ever he wants as long as he communicates with them along the way. There is no empirical evidence he has such a mandate. It is more likely he won as handily as he did because of the incompetence and incontinence of the collective Republican campaigns.  Any mandate is marginal at best but that is not what the Obama camp believes so the mythical mandate serves as a booster rocket on their confidence.

The second dynamic is their formidable campaign apparatus and the outside resources they have to engage in constant, top-of-the-line grassroots mobilization and public indoctrination. They are convinced, I think, that they can generate enough public support for their agenda, to impose it on the Congress without serious resistance, thereby  eliminating the need to barter with Republicans.

“How he will pursue his goals will more closely resemble the successful elements of his campaign, particularly the ways in which the former community organizer works to mobilize public opinion around his agenda. Each issue will have its own campaign,” the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson explained in an article on inauguration day.

I believe the President is also convinced that his favor with the public is strong enough for him to bypass the upcoming fiscal cliff issues by simply leaving them on the doorstep of Congress, insisting the legislators fix what’s broken.  That frees the Obama camp to focus exclusively on the legacy agenda, equal pay for women, gay rights, gun control, climate change, renewable energy, higher taxes, immigration, and protecting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security from entitlement reform.

The third, and most troublesome dynamic is the genuine, visceral disdain and distrust of Republicans.  It can’t  be bridged anytime soon even if either side wanted to. Neither side does. Hard core libertarian Republicans feel the same way about Obama Democrats. The feelings extend well beyond politics. They seem deeply personal.

The animosity is the culmination of incivility, polarization and intolerance that has been fermenting in American society and politics for many years. But this is worse. It is an ugliness that kept rearing its head in the Obama-Romney campaign, one of the most vicious since the Jackson-Adams campaign of 1828.

You need to look no further for evidence than the Post’s inauguration day story by Wilson in which Obama media czar, Dan Pfeiffer, reinforced their camp’s arrogant disgust for Republicans. “There’s a moment of opportunity now that’s important,” Pfeiffer said. “What’s frustrating is that we don’t have a political system or an opposition party worthy of the opportunity.”   Insulting and demeaning.

What is fascinating is how much President Obama and his cohorts sound and act like the contingent of libertarian Republicans in Congress who harbor similar attitudes toward their liberal counterparts, yet neither the extreme liberals nor the libertarians see that in the distinctions between them, there is in some respects, very little difference.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.