Though Mr. Obama spoke of a plan that “incorporates ideas from many people in this room tonight, Democrats and Republicans,” he used the kind of tough, confrontational language that suggested the extent to which the White House would seek to portray Republicans as recalcitrant and standing in the face of a historical tide.
“Know this,” he said: “I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it.”
Matthew Dowd, a onetime adviser to former President George W. Bush, argued in an interview that Mr. Obama would not succeed unless he trimmed back on his plan, defying liberal Democrats and appealing to Republicans.
“You cannot sell the country on something it doesn’t want,” Mr. Dowd said.
Mr. Obama is most engaged when his back is to the wall, typically after a period of drift. Again and again throughout his career, he has risen to the occasion: The November 2007 speech at a dinner of Democrats in Iowa that put him on the road to victory there, his speech that defused the controversy over racially charged remarks by his onetime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., even the speech he gave to Democrats at the 2004 convention in Boston that elevated him to fame.
But as he struggles with the adjustment from campaigning to governing, the battle he is trying to bring to a successful close may prove the toughest test of all.
For his first six months in Washington, Mr. Obama was carried by the momentum of the excitement of his election, by the adrenaline of dealing with the financial crisis that greeted him and by his own popularity. Now, with polls suggesting that all that is beginning to fade, and with Republicans regrouping, he is faced with a need to show that the leadership strengths he displayed as a candidate can be transferred to the office of the presidency.