A dose of humility goes a long way in life and in politics.

White House operatives went to great lengths to show Obama shifting focus from wars abroad to domestic issues at home.

Every now and then, a presidential candidate surprises us with a truly human and honest moment.

Blending hard-bitten realism with long-view optimism, Obama said that every 20 or 30 years brings a new cycle of pessimism in America.

President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?

Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public.

Obama is capable - as evidenced by his first-term success with health care reform. But mandate-building requires humility, a trait not easily associated with him.