SEATTLE » President Barack Obama walked the campaign stage with the same familiar command, to the same music as 2008, same piercing cheers, same "We love you" cries from the crowd and "I love you backs" from the president and the occasional "Yes we can" chant bubbling up.

He tossed off his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves and took in the screams of 10,000 people at the University of Washington basketball arena on Thursday.

And then, he waited.

He stood idly for 20 minutes. The rally, technically speaking, was not about him — it was for Sen. Patty Murray, the incumbent Democrat from Washington, who is locked in a close race with Dino Rossi, the Republican.

Murray spoke first and long. She gave an extended introduction of Obama and a pitch for herself while the president crossed his arms and tightened his shoulders and fidgeted slightly while the crowd grew restless waiting for the supporting player who was, of course, the real draw.

Obama zigzagged the West for four days on behalf of fellow Democrats in the longest campaign swing of his presidency, heading for home on Saturday with a last stop in Minnesota. While he remains his party’s paramount attraction, he has been something of a peripheral player in an election that many will cast as a referendum on his agenda.

He is braving ugly expectations for Nov. 2, a turbocharged (and turbofinanced) opposition and a lingering cold. He is trying to rekindle the energy that propelled his party — and himself — into office while trying to account for the record that has made him deeply unpopular in many of the states he carried in 2008.

As such, the presidential campaigner today offers a sharp contrast to the candidate of two years ago and perhaps the one who will probably run again in two years.

Obama is more critical of the opposition now, launching into long, mocking diatribes against Republicans that depart conspicuously from his unity message of his last campaign. His words are weighted with long stretches of acknowledgment about the difficulties of the last two years, as opposed to the straight-ahead hope and possibility that defined the Obama of 2008. And while his rallies featured similar themes and electricity as before, Obama could appear more restrained — perhaps in a reflection of the burdens of office, or in deference to the candidates he shared his stages with, whose careers will be decided in next week’s elections.

"When you’re the president, you’re going to be a player in the debate, but it is neater when you are on the ballot," said David Axelrod, the White House senior adviser.

"Down the homestretch of 2008, we knew we had the wind at our backs," he added. "We also had no responsibility. Now we have governing responsibility, and the wind is coming in."

In Portland this week, Obama spoke of the fatigue and frustration that many of his supporters have felt and that the pursuit of change can bring.

"Sometimes it can wear you down," the president said Wednesday night, referring to what he called "big, messy democracy."

He recalled a huge riverside rally in Portland in the spring of 2008, a raucous affair that many on the campaign pointed to as defining event that would mark the future president as Momentum Personified.

"All that hope that we felt when we had that 70,000-person rally in Portland on that beautiful day," Obama said, pausing for applause. "Sometimes," Obama said, "that fades."

He hit the same theme in subsequent days. "We are grinding it out," he said with slight variations in Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. "We are doing the hard, frustrating, inch-by-inch, day-by-day, week-by-week work of bringing about change."

The loftiness of "Yes We Can" has been obscured by the governing realities of "It’s Hard." Obama-mania circa 2010 better resembles a "keep the faith" pep talk from a weather-beaten coach than any call to action from a fresh-faced savior. Introducing Obama on Friday in Los Angeles, the actor Jamie Foxx even led the crowd in a chant of, "We are not exhausted," a backhanded rally cry if there ever was one.

"I think there is still hope and excitement here, but it feels tempered by reality," said Kathy Larsen, the cofounder of a non-profit foundation in Portland. She wore a big "Obama Mama" button to the Oregon rally and lives in nearby Happy Valley, which some residents now refer to as "Death Valley" because of the town’s high volume of home foreclosures.

"There was definitely a lot of enthusiasm, but not nearly as much as 2008," said Aaron Lerner, a sophomore from Palo Alto, Calif., after the University of Washington rally the next day. "Plus, Obama didn’t appear as youthful to me as he did before."

Aides say Obama is approaching next week’s election with a determined focus on his own role — what he can do, how he can best help. Unlike some past presidents, like Bill Clinton, Obama tends not to get caught up in micropolitics and does not drill down into district-to-district minutiae.

While a crushing defeat of Democrats would be widely seen as judgment on his presidency, advisers say Obama would probably not take heavy midterm losses as a personal repudiation, as George W. Bush seemed to after the "thumpin"’ his party suffered in 2006, or as Clinton did after the Democrats were run over in 1994.

"He’s not going to be sitting here brooding over the personal implications of all this," Axelrod said.

As last week’s swing wore on, Obama seemed to adapt to campaign mode. At his first event, on Wednesday in Oregon, he never removed his suit coat, acknowledged his cold and coughed through some applause breaks.

But by Thursday morning, he was relishing an impromptu trip to Top Pot Doughnuts shop in Seattle, working a flash mob that had gathered on the street outside. His motorcade weaved through the streets of North Seattle, past a topless obese guy and a swarm of elementary school students who had emptied out of their classrooms to wave hello.

At a Silicon Valley fundraiser, he boasted — maybe exaggerated — about the size of his recent rallies. Afterward, the president crossed the street in Palo Alto to meet to a bunch of young kids standing on the curb. "I wish I was in my PJ’s," the president told one little girl who was wearing her own.

He hailed the fighting spirit of Murray and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., even though both women are short, or in the case of Boxer, "vertically challenged," as he put it at a rally Friday at the University of Southern California. Later, the president headlined a twilight rally at a Las Vegas middle school for the oratorically challenged Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, who is deadlocked with his Republican challenger, Sharron Angle.

Reid spoke first and quietly, to the point that many of the young people bused in for the event talked among themselves during his remarks, drowning him out for much of the audience.

When Obama took the stage, the crowd of less than 10,000 people — probably the smallest rally of the week despite being held outdoors on a Friday night — ignited in screams.

"Are you fired up?" Obama said, invoking another refrain from the last go-round.

After a few minutes, the crowd burst into an "Obama" chorus until the wingman tried to steer it back to the candidate. "I appreciate everybody saying ‘Obama,’ the president said. "But I want everybody to say ‘Harry! Harry! Harry!’"

And for a few dutiful seconds they did, before the chant faded out.

© 2010 The New York Times Company