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President Obama is back on tour this week, trying to conjure up some of the old magic.

I doubt he will do it in his first stop in New Mexico where he is holding one of his slightly uncomfortable garden gatherings, in which he roams the lawn clutching a microphone, dressed in white shirt sleeves, expounding on his economic policy to overwhelmed-looking loyalists sitting around him in deck chairs.

I wonder if, even awed by celebrity, some will have trouble staying awake in the heat of an Indian summer. Certainly these events haven't been a wake-up call to a nation. Although no doubt it is pretty impressive for those actually crammed into their neigbours' gardens, it rarely makes an impact beyond the dutiful coverage of live cable TV.

He might do better with the next day's event at a college town in Wisconsin when we are promised a rally like in the days of yore. Some think this is about although one event does not convince me.I can't see a pattern or much of a purpose. It is all a bit strange, this lack of a clear strategy, and the New York Times thinks it is the mark of a White House that doesn't take its politics seriously enough.

This rings true, and is supported by Bob Woodward's new book Obama's wars. I've only just brought my copy and unlike the president's spokesman Robert Gibbs I doubt I will read it in a night.The last few pages of Franzen's beckon when I am done with you, anyhow. But the passage that sprang out at me was not the stuff that we have already turned into headlines, but this :

(head of Obama's transition team and former Clinton chief of staff) "compared Obama to Spock from Star Trek. ... Podesta was not sure Obama felt anything, especially in his gut. He intellectualized and then charted the path forward, essentially picking up the emotions of others and translating them into ideas"

It is rarely good for a politician to lack gut instincts. But at the moment it is the president who needs a good translator, to turn his his ideas into emotion that inspires others.

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