My take - he is going fullbore Nixon. When things got the roughest for Nixon he would inexplicably lapse into monologues about growing up in Whittier California, his mother who was a “saint”, trying out of the football team etc. etc. My guess is that affirmative action boy is going down and he’s starting to reminisce about his childhood, his previous political campaigns (another Nixon trait).
I thought that was exactly what it read like.
There is justice and balance in this world. Obama is no Stalin or Hitler or even LBJ. Their will was 100x stonger than his. He is burned out, bored now with being POTUS just as we're burned out with him. The next four years in Hawaii will be much more fun for him than being in the White House, so he's just going through the motions.
I think Obama virtually threw the first debate. If he had once mentioned Bain Capital, the 47%, or Mitt's wealth putting him out of touch with the common man, then the media would have had a field day repeating these items over and over even while they were conceeding that Mitt won. By staying silent Obama destroyed $150 million in attack ads on Mitt.
And Obama has picked his Second to administer the “coup de grace” Bill Clinton. Obama has to know that Bill cannot allow him another term if Hillary is to have her last chance for POTUS in 2016, so Bill is there putting a nice narrative on things as Obama slowly goes down. If Obama shows any signs of coming back, Bill will quietly scuttle them while he talks of the tragedy of the second Black POTUS brought down by Republican racism—a perfect lead-in to Hillary's 2016 campaign.