That was one provocative expansion of Obama-as-Rorschach test I hadn’t encountered before, and I guess anything is possible, particularly when it involves race in America. But what is unquestionably true is my friend’s underlying premise  that the Obama we see now is generally consistent with the one he presented in the 2008 campaign. Many, if not all, of the positions that have angered liberals since he entered the White House line up with his positions then, including his stubborn and futile faith in the prospect of bipartisanship in Washington.

Image Frank Rich Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

When the 2008 Obama called Afghanistan an essential war and vowed to take out terrorist havens in Pakistan, he wasn’t just posturing to prove he was as hawkish as Hillary Clinton  which is what some chose to hear. Though he nominally supported a public option as a plank of health care reform, it was not a high priority and he rarely mentioned it, according to a review of his campaign speeches, interviews and debates by Sam Stein of The Huffington Post. Obama never said anything to suggest that he was interested in economic interventionism as bold as, say, the potential nationalization of failing banks. He was unambiguous in his professed opposition to same-sex marriage and largely silent on gun control. And as Jake Tapper of ABC News chronicled last week, Obama had even opened the door to offshore oil drilling in the weeks before Election Day.

It’s not just the Tea Party right or some on the liberal left who see only the Obama they want to see. This phenomenon extends to moderate Republicans who refuse to believe that Obama agrees with them even when he does. Susan Collins, the senator from Maine, reacted to the news of the Christmas Day bomber with an over-the-top outburst accusing Obama of being soft on terrorism. Though Obama’s education reforms have increased Pell grants and nettled one liberal constituency, teachers’ unions, Lamar Alexander, the supposedly temperate senator from Tennessee, has characterized the president as pushing “a Soviet-style, European, and even Asian higher-education model where the government manages everything.” Mitt Romney has now started a full-tilt campaign to angrily challenge the indisputable reality that “Obamacare” resembles his own health care reform package in Massachusetts.

What’s clear is that Obama largely remains a fixed point even while the rest of us keep wildly revising our judgments, whether looking at him through the prism of partisan politics, race, media melodrama or any other we choose. It’s our recession-tossed country, not his presidency, that is rocked by violent mood swings.

That doesn’t mean his presidency will be successful. Being consistent is not the same as being a forceful leader. If there’s been an overarching, nonideological failing so far in Obama, it’s been his execution of the levers of power. Whether in articulating his health care bottom line, or closing Guantánamo Bay, or moving forward on repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” he has often seemed tardy or unfocused, at times missing deadlines he has set himself. The narrative that might link his presidential policies into a clear, mobilizing vision for the country remains murky, which in turn facilitates the caricature of his views from all sides.

But in the immediate aftermath of his health care victory, at least, there does seem to be real, not imagined, change in Obama’s management modus operandi. Whether challenging Karzai and Bibi, or pushing through 15 recess appointments, or taunting those who would repeal the health care law to “go for it,” this is a far more energized executive than the sometimes tentative technocrat we’ve often seen thus far. The pace has picked up  if not to faster-than-a-speeding-bullet Superman velocity, then at least as much as the inherent sclerosis of Washington will allow.

And not a moment too soon. The speed with which Obama navigates out of the recession, as measured by new jobs and serious financial reform, remains by far the most determinative factor in how he, his party and, most of all, the country will fare in the fractious year of 2010. If he succeeds in that all-important challenge  or, for that matter, if he fails  the enigmatic, Rorschach-test phase of Obama’s still young relationship to the American people may rapidly draw to a close. It will be the moment of clarity that allows us to at last judge him, as we should all presidents, on what he’s actually done rather than on who we imagine he is.