'[T]hose folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities.' he said, referring to GOP candidates. | REUTERS Obama's Super Tuesday sneak attack

Barack Obama spent his Super Tuesday barking back at the GOP dogs of war.

Planting himself defiantly in the middle of a day that might (or might not) end with Mitt Romney’s coronation as his presidential rival, Obama railed against Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Without ever naming them, he denounced their collective claim that he’s been a weakling on Iran, willing to sell out Israel for a few months of pre-election tranquillity.


“[T]hose folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities. They’re not commander in chief,” said Obama, in the cramped confines of the White House briefing room.

(See also: Full Super Tuesday election results)

Obama’s none-too-subtle suggestion was that they never, ever should be commanders in chief, a sentiment he expressed repeatedly during an hour of election-year politics that might have appeared, to a midday national TV audience, to be a mostly sober discussion of war, peace and diplomacy.

In Obama’s performance were the unmistakable echoes of 2008, when Hillary Clinton made a similar argument against him, playing the responsible veteran to his inexperienced newbie on the international stage.

In fact, the news conference took place almost four years to the day when Clinton first aired her famous “3 a.m.” ad in Ohio.

“There’s no doubt that those who are suggesting, or proposing, or beating the drums of war should explain clearly to the American people what the costs and benefits of war would be,” Obama said — before daring the trio to explicitly call for a war and brave the public backlash.

Republicans laughed at Obama’s timing and his staff’s denial that his performance was counter programming to the Republican primaries.

“These press conferences only serve to reinforce the president’s lack of accomplishment on the issue of the economy,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran GOP consultant who is advising the Romney campaign. “He usually gets an hour of TV time where he says absolutely nothing new. His ability to reframe the debate from a presidential podium has steadily diminished during his term in office.”

Obama has always been the kind of president who likes to sit down with “60 Minutes” rather than brave the jackal pack of the White House press corps, a less decorous bunch forever trying to trip him up.

His first full press conference at the White House in five months began with him taking a genial jab at the Republican field: “I understand there are some political contests going on tonight.”

And he quickly gained his desired altitude above the fray when the topic toggled to serious, even frightening, questions about Israel, Iran and Syria.

Obama’s measured approach reflected his nature as a politician and his mood following tense negotiations in the Oval Office with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But it also served the political purpose of making Obama appear deeply, even gravely, presidential at a time when his would-be foes are desperately scrambling, comically at times, for a share of Tuesday night’s 10-state, 417-delegate primary haul.

The timing of the news conference also spared a president with wobbly approval numbers from being peppered with tougher questions about the economy, unemployment and the housing crisis — the stuff that dominated his last turn before the entire White House press corps in October.

The lone exception was a question on the issue of skyrocketing gas prices, which has sent a shudder through an Obama reelection effort that is just starting to regain some of its ’08 swagger, thanks to Romney’s troubles securing the nomination.

Obama, himself, raised the issue of housing during a five-minute preamble, announcing a program for homeowners with mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration to refinance their loans for an average savings of $1,000 annually.

Even that had a 2012 touch point. “I’m not going to be one of those people who says we should stand by and let housing hit bottom,” Obama said, a reference to one of Romney’s less fortunate utterances.

He had clearly been prepped for a question regarding Rush Limbaugh’s “slut” comment in referring to Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, and he tucked into it with relish.

“The reason I called Ms. Fluke is because I thought about Malia and Sasha, and one of the things I want them to do as they get older is to engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on. I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way,” he said.

“And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens. And I wanted Sandra to know that I thought her parents should be proud of her, and that we want to send a message to all our young people that being part of a democracy involves argument and disagreements and debate, and we want you to be engaged, and there’s a way to do it that doesn’t involve you being demeaned and insulted, particularly when you’re a private citizen.”

As political theater, it almost went off without a hitch. Almost.

The back-bench print scribes in the room, frustrated after months of shouting questions to a unresponsive Obama, rebelled against the White House’s choreographed order of questioning, which included the standard roster of TV types, cable networks and The New York Times .

“Mr. President! Mr. President!” shouted veteran Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet — who once asked Obama about the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. — prompting the president to claim the Cambridge, Mass., police department “acted stupidly.”

This time, Sweet asked a less combustible question: Did Obama move the May G-8 summit from Chicago to Camp David because of security concerns?

No, Obama replied. It would just give him a chance to spend quieter quality time with world leaders, including Vladimir Putin. (The local Chicago press doesn’t buy that explanation and has been reporting that police commanders have been so worried about violent demonstrations, they have been buying books about riots from Amazon.)

Obama made more news in Israel, arguably, than at home. Despite his repeated assurance that the U.S. will have Israel’s “back” on Iran, he delivered a stern warning to Netanyahu and domestic critics who have argued that the Jewish state needs to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities — or face a “zone of immunity” when it’s too late to stop the atomic program.

“This notion that somehow we have a choice to make in the next week, or two weeks, or month, or two months is not borne out by the facts,” Obama said.

The news conference was Obama’s first since November, when he took questions from several reporters while in Hawaii for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and his first at the White House since early October. It also was his maiden voyage as a candidate for reelection.

The race — and his push to win over female and Hispanic voters — never seemed far from his mind, even in his choice of questioners, which included Lori Montenegro of Telemundo.

And he seemed delighted, in a presidentially restrained way, by Romney’s travails.

CBS’s Norah O’Donnell asked toward the end of the press conference what Obama thought about Romney comparing him to Jimmy Carter.

“What would you like to say to Mr. Romney?”

Obama replied: “Good luck tonight.”

“No, really,” she shot back.

“Really,” he added.