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.

If you didn’t watch the president’s State of the Union speech last night, well, where the hell were you? I know: a lot of people think the SOU is politics at its worst, all ceremony and symbolism (the jumping up and sitting down, the endless procession in and out) but after the year Obama had, weren’t you even curious what he might say, or how he might say it?

Often the president at this treacherous juncture is reduced to the style of a husband apologizing to his wife after a weekend of fishing with the guys (or whatever they’re calling it now): “I’m gonna fix the roof! And mow that lawn! And we’ll go out Saturday night, hire a babysitter! And hasn’t it been a while since we’ve seen your mother?” Big finish, followed by make-up sex — or more likely, slow ironic clapping or worse: a steely stare, a shrug, silence.

The Republicans had plenty of the latter for Obama. He even joked about it, bless him, saying, “I thought I’d get some applause on that one” when he mentioned tax cuts and the GOP side did its impression of a bunch of wooden Indians. That kind of partisan silence was not surprising — what, you thought they were going to lay down their arms, or opposition, especially in light of having just elected another senator? Now that they can truly prevent anything from happening if they remain united in opposition?

No, the most amazing quiet — the kind where you can hear a pin drop, where the only sound of in the chamber was that of the president dropping his hands on the podium — came late in the speech: “I campaigned on the promise of change — change we can believe in, the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change — or that I can deliver it.”

First of all, it’s hard to remember a president inviting so much criticism — and with the Republicans in lockstep against him, who needs an invite? But to be self-critical without being dismissive, to acknowledge that you may have promised more than you delivered, without reneging on the promises, is more than skillful politics.

“Our administration has had some political setbacks this year and some of them were deserved,” he continued. “But I wake up every day knowing that they are nothing compared to the setbacks that families all across this country have faced this year. And what keeps me going — what keeps me fighting — is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism, that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people, that lives on.”

The silence you heard may have been truly nonpartisan: the amazement that greets anyone when they try to be truly honest, and even humble in the face of the responsibilities that come with political office.

The last month has been pretty rough, thanks for asking. I spent some time in SF trying to help my son, who is grown or says he is, and when I wasn’t looking at apartments and talking to other concerned parties I caught up on my movies.

My wife hadn’t wanted to see Up in the Air, in part because she has had to lay a few people off recently and was looking for something more like escape at the cinema, so I went alone and found myself wondering: what the hell? I mean, if I had seen the flick with no expectations or advance hype I might have reacted differently. But the National Board of Review named it picture of the year. Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner won a Golden Globe for best screenplay. It’s on the short list for a best-picture Oscar. Are we talking about the same movie?

For the dozens of you who haven’t seen the movie, I will try to avoid spoiling any plot points. Though honestly, if you can’t see the twists of this flick coming, you haven’t been to the movies in the last 2o years. No, it doesn’t have the phony, staged-home feel of Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated, or mushy new age undertow of Avatar. But if you have seen any romantic comedy in which the hero (or sometimes heroine) has a sudden, and rather out-of-character, change of heart  — going from selfish prick to St. Francis of Assisi in the last act — you’ve seen this movie.

Much has been made of Reitman (who also directed) and his decision to use recently laid off people to play the folks who George Clooney’s character sacks for a living. And yes, that’s a nice touch, if a little gratuitous (“Hungry freaks, daddy!”). Maybe that’s why so many critics fell so hard for this rather predictably redemptive rom-com: because they’re all worried about their jobs and thinking that could be them up there on the silver screen! After all, my old colleague Glenn Kenny got a role in Steven Soderbergh’s Girlfriend Experience. Everyone needs a Plan B.

Now that Janet Napolitano has admitted that perhaps the system did not, in fact, work when a nutso Nigerian boarded a Detroit-bound plane in Amsterdam on Christmas, we no longer have to revise our understanding of the terms “system” and “work.” It is clear now that having even your own father rat you out (as the banker dad of Umar Farouk Abdulmattalub did when he called the American Embassy in October, saying explicitly that he thought his son had turned terrorist in Yemen) is not enough to get you banned from travel to the US.

It is also clear that Christmas Day — not just an occasion for shopping but one of the holiest of Christian holidays — is treated no differently by the Transportation Security Administration than any other day. And people named Umar Farouk Abdulmattalub are treated no differently than passengers named Sean Keith Elder.

Not that I’m suggesting profiling —  heaven forfend. And I am well aware of the delicate balance that exists between the need for security and the right to privacy etc. As a TSA official lamented to the New York Times, “You are second-guessed one day and criticized another.” But unless by system we mean passengers voluntarily wrestling bomb-throwers to the ground, we need to revise our safety standards.

Having just flown across the country (and bracing for myself for the return flight this weekend) I, like you, have wondered how they could possibly make the experience any more uncomfortable and humiliating. But I don’t actually lump security checks in with charging for food and luggage. I think it just needs to be consistent.

Napolitano, who is probably as qualified to be head of Homeland Security as Tom Ridge was, is getting her lumps now. Her boss has already had a hard year of learning how far buck-passing will get you. The size of the watch list was a political football when Bush was president (remember when they wouldn’t let Sen. Edward Kennedy fly because he had the same name as some suspected terrorist?), and now Obama would like to pass the whole controversy — along with Iraq, Afghanistan and host of other headaches — back to the previous administration. Just as GWB did when he suggested that 9/11 was Clinton’s fault for having not taken out Bin Laden earlier.

But you get the credit and the blame for the things that happen on your watch. Even if that watch is stopped and only right twice a day.

Now that Joe Lieberman has replaced Tiger Woods as the most hated man in America, it’s time to contemplate the fickle hand of celebrity. Joining us in our deep thoughts on the subject, in which someone must quote Andy Warhol, is public scold and media conscious Neil Gabler, who weighs in with an essay on the whole Tiger thing in this week’s Newsweek. 

Oh you don’t know Newsweek? It used to be a respected newsweekly, Avis to Time’s Hertz, though generally less cheesy and more idiosyncratic. Until this year when in a moment of magazine harakiri it redesigned itself into obloquy. The idea seemed to be to make the magazine more relevant in this internet age when people need a newsweekly the way they need cassette tapes. But with its we’re-a-monthly-disguised-as-a-weekly mindset the new Newsweek looks as hip as Ozzie Nelson with set of bongos. Magazine designers I know have described its redesign as a fiasco of New Coke proportions, but maybe you hadn’t noticed. 

Anyway, Gabler says it’s okay that we’re fascinated with celebrity after all and that the 15-minute fame of Tiger’s mistresses fulfills some national blah blah. Honestly, I haven’t finished the piece, partly because I hate looking at the magazine so much, but also because I have never forgiven Gabler  for his slightly hysterical argument — advanced in the 2000 book Life: The Movie — that the then-new virtual realities of video games and yes, the internet would destroy life as we knew it. (Unlike the virtual realities of, oh, the novel, the opera, the soap opera…) That and the fact he wrote such a long book about Walter Winchell, a villain of Lieberman like proportions who history has for the most part forgotten. 

I guess Tiger owes Joe one. Maybe he can loan him one of his bimbos. The most depressing thing about l’affaire Woods to me was not the epic nature of his infidelity (I didn’t know his “character” enough to expect otherwise, did you?) but the routine sameness of the women he cheated with. Honestly, I can’t tell them apart, and I suspect he couldn’t either. Maybe that was the point. 

I’m not being fair in my analogy, I know. Tiger just screwed his wife, and his own career as a spokesman for anything, uh, wholesome. Lieberman, by flip-flopping on an early Medicare buy-in and rendering the health care reform bill that will come out of the Senate fairly toothless, has fucked us all over. And made a million bucks from the insurance industry. Way to go, Joe!