E.J. Dionne assures us that the cornered rat is ready to fight

For those on the Left who are worried about Obama’s seeming passivity — fear no more.  Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne assures us that Obama is packed so tight into a corner, he’s finally ready to fight.  Finally.  Really.  Yup, the old fighter’s still there.  Honest.

For Obama’s lieutenants, his comeback from the ’07 summer doldrums provided an overlearned lesson that encouraged them to ignore external criticism and cruise along with complete confidence in their man’s almost magical powers of restoration.

The president’s loyalists still have faith in him and still love to criticize media narratives they think underestimate him. But this time, both he and they are expressing a level of frustration that may be the healthiest thing happening to Obama in what is an otherwise dismal moment in his presidency. A White House crowd often too sure of itself is fully aware of the ferocious fight Obama faces and the seriousness of the problems he confronts. Their mood and past experience suggests that a new Obama — or, in many ways, the old Obama of 2008 — is about to reappear.

Dionne’s confident (kind of) assurance about the Obamessiah’s fighting spirit is followed by a convoluted explanation about the way in which the debt ceiling fight, during which Obama saved America, really galvanized him by giving him wiggle room.  (My first effort at that sentence resulted in an amusing, Freudian typo:  “a convoluted explanation about the way in which the debt ceiling fight, during which Obama saved Obama….”)

Maybe Dionne’s right.  Maybe Obama will fight back.  I wonder, though, whether he has enough fans left rooting for his come-back, or if his fans, Elvis-like, have left the building.