(AP) WASHINGTON - The biracial American kid with a Kenyan father who went from place to place, who struggled to put down roots and figure out where he fit in? He’s Barack Obama.

The street-savvy, distinctly African-American hoops player who talks a smooth game and plays a smoother one? He’s Barack Obama. The Harvard law grad, community organizer and besuited Chicago pol with workaday roots in middle America? He’s Barack Obama, too.

Now we, the people can add another Barack Obama to the mix: the presidential one who is quickly making the 21st-century bully pulpit his own and is able, through his diverse life experiences, to deploy carefully curated cross-sections of his own history as a potent consensus-building tool.

"I contain multitudes," wrote Walt Whitman, whose poetry played no small role in defining how Americans see themselves. The same could be said for the new president, who’s doing a little shaping of the national psyche himself these days.

Even as he took office, Obama carved out versions of himself in defined relief, harnessing them to hammer home key points and showing he is unafraid to use the qualities associated with being, as he has often put it, a "mutt."

"We know," he said in his inaugural address, "that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness." And while he was talking about the nation, he might well have been describing himself.

In the address, he was "a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant." In the oath itself, he was "Barack Hussein Obama," multicultural icon. In his biography on the new White House Web site, he is someone with "values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead."

None of these contradicts the others. Nor is any of them inaccurate. Yet together, they suggest a nimble approach designed to frame Obama for maximum appeal across multiple demographics _ a packaging strategy based on a unique, melting-pot reality unlike any previous president.

After all, how many other chief executives have felt, simultaneously, the sting of American racism, the pride of a Harvard law degree and the firsthand memory of growing up in a poor and developing Asian nation?

"He’s Kenya, he’s Kansas. He’s Harvard, he’s Chicago. He’s black, he’s white," said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, a CNN political analyst.

This approach helped Obama broaden his appeal during the campaign, when he consciously tried to harness his various roots and branches. At one point, visiting Kansas, where his mother’s grandparents lived, he told a British newspaper that he wanted to "talk about the roots of my life that directly connect to the broader story of the country."

But that was the campaign. Will the same approach help him govern? And can it ultimately be pushed too far? Politicians who try to be everything to everyone can eventually face accusations that, behind it all, they’re really no one at all.

"This is a man who has experienced a lot of different pieces of America," says Leila Brammer, an expert on inaugural addresses who teaches communications at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota.

"Cynics might think it wears thin, but it is indeed who he is," she says. "And he is able to weave these different experiences together into a really clear vision. If he stays on this same track, I don’t see anybody being able to say, `Who is the real Barack Obama?’"

The ability to connect with the American public, a visual-age talent that has only grown more pronounced with the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, has played out in the personality traits of recent presidents and how they’re framed. Bill Clinton forged a connection with millions of constituents who were children of divorce and grew up poor. George W. Bush found understanding among Americans who had struggled with addiction.

But Obama notches that up big-time; he is a self-contained buffet of potential entry points for constituent connection. Anne Heineman Batory, an expert in behavioral marketing, predicts that Obama’s authenticity credentials _ the fact that these are his actual experiences, not political poses _ will help the president maintain what is effectively the strength of his brand.

"When you think about the people he goes to church with versus the people he practices law with, it’s so broad. So it’s natural for him to adjust to the audience," says Batory, a professor at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.

"There’s a part you can relate to no matter where you come from," she says. "You can look at his life and experiences and say, `There’s a piece of that that relates to me. Maybe he can understand where I’m coming from.’"

Since Obama’s election, many Americans have expressed hope that an Obama administration might create a post-racial nation where we can finally get past some of the pain created by our ancestors. Those folks can look to the president’s life experiences as evidence that such things are possible. We all contain multitudes; that’s part of the American experience.

To many Americans, the kind of many-faceted human being that Barack Obama represents is less an "other" than any time in our history. How Obama handles his self-contained multiplicity _ shrewd and calculating or inclusive and productive _ will set a tone that dictates how entrenched this attitude becomes. But now more than ever, one thing seems clear: We have met the president, and he is us.

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Ted Anthony covers politics and culture for The Associated Press. Comments about Measure of a Nation can be sent to measure(at)ap.org.