With campaign season here, Obama shows some swagger

Reporting from Las Vegas —  He’s confronting Republicans in the House chamber and on a sunny tarmac in front of the cameras. He’s singing Al Green and busting out corny jokes. He’s trying out his Spanish and taking off the necktie.

It looks like the sometimes-aloof, overly cerebral President Obama has gotten some of his mojo back.

Perhaps getting out of Washington has been the tonic, or perhaps it’s the sight of Republican presidential contenders in Florida beating up one another in a barrage of television ads. Whatever the cause, the effect has been on clear display.

The president’s State of the Union speech had turns both soaring and taunting. His ensuing road show tour to promote his populist agenda has showcased his rapport with voters. Perhaps most obviously, Obama the fighter showed up on a Phoenix airstrip, where a routine meet-and-greet with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer turned testy after Brewer said she’d like to meet with the president.

Obama responded by complaining that the governor’s account of their last meeting, as told in her recent book, was inaccurate. The exchange turned tense, even animated, when Brewer jabbed a finger in Obama’s face.

A day after that confrontation, the White House was hoping to turn attention back to the economic blueprint Obama was on the road to promote.

But the tussle on the tarmac may have captured the most important message the president has right now — that as a tough campaign begins in earnest, he’s ready to mix it up.

“I’m usually accused of not being intense enough, right?” a laughing Obama told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer in an interview Thursday night. “Too relaxed.”

The accusers are often Obama’s biggest supporters. His base has criticized the president as too cool and too quick to cower to political opponents. Since last fall, when he pivoted away from various unsuccessful efforts to compromise with House Republicans, his stock with his base has risen.

“I think what people were waiting for was not just the president taking the right stand, but the fighting spirit that had been lacking,” said Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, a leading liberal advocacy group. Ruben said the group’s members also had been encouraged by policy choices — Obama shelving the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and scuttling an online privacy bill — that showed “bold action.”

On Obama’s exchange with Brewer, whose illegal immigration stance has made her anathema to the left, Ruben said, “Anybody who calls out Jan Brewer is OK in my book.”

Love from the base isn’t the only reason Obama may be showing some confidence. Polls show Republicans in Congress have shouldered more of the blame than the president for last year’s ugly legislative battles. His GOP rivals for the White House have spent weeks tearing one another down, and there’s no clear end in sight.

Meanwhile, Obama can point to some small bright spots in the economy — the unemployment rate has slowly inched down to 8.5%, and Americans report feeling more optimistic about the economy. On the foreign policy front, this week also included the successful rescue of two kidnapped aid workers in Somalia by Navy SEALs.

In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, Obama occasionally broke into the full-throated preacher’s timbre of his 2008 campaign, particularly as he built to a patriotic crescendo at the end.

He was even thundering as he pronounced that anyone who thinks the U.S. is not influential in the world “doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” He wasn’t subtle when he harked back to last summer’s fight over raising the debt ceiling and needled Congress about its sinking approval rating: “Who benefited from that fiasco?”

As it turned out, Obama did. His approval rating as that fierce debate closed had dropped to less than 40%. In the months since he began to take on his congressional opponents, his rating improved and in mid-January stood at 45%, according to Gallup.

Obama has clearly loosened up when he’s away from Washington, a place he swears little affection for.

He recently surprised the crowd at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, N.Y., by breaking into Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” creating a YouTube hit.

As he swung through Arizona and Nevada this week, he didn’t hesitate to use a little Spanish, a regular gauge of his comfort level.

It helps that his daughters are studying Spanish right now, Obama told the Spanish-language network Univision. “They’ve got a head start on me, and they’ll be entirely fluent,” Obama said. “So they maybe will translate for me the next time I’m out.”

At an event at a Las Vegas UPS facility Thursday, the president shed his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves and strayed far from his prepared remarks.

He declared the U.S. the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas” and gave a shout-out to UPS for being one of the first companies to respond to his administration’s call to reduce the use of conventional fuels in its trucks.

“That’s how they roll,” he said, to the crowd’s laughter — and his own.

cparsons@latimes.com

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Parsons reported from Las Vegas and Hennessey from Washington.