Obama changes the subject

...that is, the grammatical subject of his sentences when he's calling out certain parties for obstructing his jobs agenda.

Jonathan Cohn has already made this point in brief. But I'm going to gild the lily, overemphasize it, put the obvious in boldface below, because this rhetorical turn goes to the heart of how Obama has driven his supporters mad in recent months via continued pursuit of compromise and bipartisan cooperation with those who keep drive-by shooting him.

On Labor Day, Obama moved away from his months-long practice of criticizing "Congress" for blocking formerly bipartisan, consensus measures to boost trade and growth and instead called out "congressional Republicans." Got that?  The subject (or object) of the sentence is not "Congress" (sidelined as an adjective) but "Republicans." Way to call a spade a spade, Mr. President. It's been a long time coming.

Compare the pablum in Obama's Sept. 3 weekly address:

FDR was Hoover, too

We've all heard by now that FDR cut spending in 1937, sending the economy into a sharp recession that reversed much of the rapid economic growth his New Deal policies had helped spur in his first term. 

What's less well known, I think (at least to me), is that when he reversed course after this disastrous bout of balanced budget fever, he did so only fitfully, with ambivalent half measures, and the economy sputtered on with weak growth and unemployment near 20% until 1941, when wartime spending kicked in. Moreover, his assault on big business, via populist denunciations and new corporate taxes -- driven mainly by a need in 1935-36 to cover his left flank and stave off a feared populist third-party challenge -- left a widespread perception that he'd driven away the confidence fairy. David M. Kennedy summarizes in Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945:

Yet so far as the economy was concerned in 19838, Roosevelt's actions looked for the moment to be something considerably less than revolutionary. The president may have planted the seeds of the "Keynesian Revolution" in American fiscal policy, but it would be some time before they would fully flower. In the meantime, Roosevelt seemed to have wrought the worst of all worlds: insufficient government spending to effect recovery, but sufficient government sword-rattling to keep private capital cowed. "The President won't spend any money," an exasperated Jerome Frank exclaimed. "Nobody on the outside will believe the trouble we have with him. Yet they call him a big spender. It makes me laugh." As for private businessmen, they still hesitated to make new investments. Why, the president mused on night at dinner, did they lack confidence in the economy? Eleanor replied tellingly, "They are afraid of you."  Deprived of adequate public or private means of revival, the economy sputtered on, not reaching the output levels of 1937 until the fateful year of 1941, when the threat of war, not enlightened New Deal policies, compelled government expenditures at levels previously unimaginable.