What you wrote regarding multiple personalities makes sense. It explains why he wrote 2008..the personality he was at that moment hasn’t been out to perform since 2008. .
“It explains why he wrote 2008..the personality he was at that moment hasn’t been out to perform since 2008. .”
I think you’re over-analyzing this. In May 2008, Obama was at the top of the world, having crushed Hillary in the primaries and being treated as rock star/emperor (use your own analogy). He was going to “save” us from GWB and turn the country around so that we were “proud to be Americans” again, blah, blah, blah. I think his using 2008 was simply a Freudian slip reflecting wishful thinking.
As for the style of dating, that’s the way they’ve always done it in the British empire....