'President' Obama gets an early start

It won’t be official until Jan. 20, but it’s looking like a new president is in charge.

Barack Obama teetered to the other side of that “one president at a time” fence he’s been straddling for the past nine weeks. The president-elect appeared his most presidential yet on Thursday as he delivered his sobering economic speech in Virginia.

Obama even acknowledged the shift himself. The only time during his remarks the president-elect referred to himself in the formal, he did so sans “elect.”

Of Americans without jobs, families losing their savings and a deeper, irreversible economic crisis, Obama said:

“It is not a future I accept as president of the United States.”

Others, too, got caught up in the spirit on the campus of George Mason University.

“This plan is about restoring the national confidence – we are confident in this president at this time,” Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine told reporters after Obama’s speech.

“We have to have bold action,” Kaine continued, “And the president has laid that out today.”

Obama’s speech at the Fairfax campus’ Center for the Arts certainly had the trimmings of a presidential affair, more so than any event he’s headlined since the election.

The stage at George Mason was backdropped with blue velvet curtains and six American flags. Another stand featuring Old Glory was affixed stage right. Several hundred people sat in the audience, including 20 governors and mayors who were there at Obama’s invitation.

When Obama took to the podium at 11:15 a.m. attendees rose to their feet. They clapped and cheered as one might at the opera, not with the verve of a campaign rally.

For 15 minutes, the president-elect laid out the dire state of the economy and his vision of how to fix it.

The president-elect drove home his speech by channeling some memorable lines from the first inaugural addresses of two pivotal Democratic presidents before him.

“I'm calling on all Americans – Democrats and Republicans and independents,” Obama said, to “insist that the first question each of us asks isn't "What's good for me?" but "What's good for the country my children will inherit?"

(John F. Kennedy on January 20, 1961: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”)

Rounding out the end of his remarks, Obama proclaimed, “It is this spirit that will enable us to confront these challenges with the same spirit that has led previous generations to face down war and depression and fear itself.”

(Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 20, 1933: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”)

In a conference room shortly after Obama’s speech, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was wistful.

He said he had come hear a strong message from “our new president,” vowed to help “our new president” and professed his support for “the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that President Obama outlined today.”