If you haven’t watched Obama at the House Republican Conference in Baltimore yesterday, you owe it to yourself to look at some of the video. Especially if you supported his candidacy and have wondered since last November if he had the mettle to get the job done. Especially if you have wondered if he really was invested in dialogue with the GOP and getting beyond bipartisanship. Especially if you watched the Republicans during the State of the Union address — slumped in their seats, sitting on their hands, playing with their Blackberries, altogether looking like a bunch of punks kept after school on a sunny day — and wondered if there was any chance of the president ever really reaching these mooks.

First of course he had to listen to them — many with a variation of the “When did you stop beating your wife?” question that he gently and firmly dismantled with a graceful “let’s look at some of the premises first” response. But acknowledging when he had fallen short of his own goals (greater transparency in the run-up to the health care debate being one) while giving them more respect than they generally give him.

“This is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care,” he said of the health care bill now before the Congress. “We’ve got to close the gap a little between the rhetoric and the reality… whether it’s on health care or energy or what have you.” And the reality gap, the rhetoric overdose was  “not just on your side, it’s on our side as well. It’s part of what’s happened to our politics.”

There were no Democrats present, and hence no applause when he refuted the attacks with candor and even humor (“You’d think this was some Bolshevik plot”). “I think both sides can take some blame for the sour climate on Capital Hill,” he allowed. “What I can do maybe to help is to try and bring Republican and Democratic leadership together on a more regular basis with me. That’s, I think, maybe a failure on my part.”

Say what? Remember when George W. Bush was asked if he had any regrets, could think of anything he would do differently, and he couldn’t think of a single thing, couldn’t even make one up? (That box on his back must have been on the fritz.)

“Look,” Obama usually begins his responses by saying. It’s a verbal tic, and a time-buyer: the equivalent of Reagan’s “Well,” or the “ums” and “likes” and “you knows” of most speakers. I think when he says that he is calibrating his response — he doesn’t want to sound like he’s lecturing people and I know that is how most of his opponents think of him. But he is also inviting you to join him in observing, as independently as possible, how far we’ve fallen — and imagine how we might get up. Listen to the man. Look.