Obama operates with total "Plausible Deniability." E.G., in the Health Care Debate, he knows ... and wants to know .... nothing about what is in the various bills.
Within the dialectic he uses, he therefore cannot be accused of lying. He stakes out very extreme positions ... and then is rewarded as a "Peacemaker," and "Bi-Partisan Compromiser" when he appears to backtrack, e.g. , on the "public option."
We simply have never had a President who has been so deftly managed before. He's a dummy and an excellent multiple teleprompter reader, but we really have no idea who the chief ventriloquist is from day to day, or how many there actually might be.
He is in fact a talking head.