There are shades of #4 in him as well (the incompetent empty suit), but IMO that is an ingredient and not the whole cake.  It might be because he doesn't have the experience to get out of this situation that he keeps falling into it, but the bigger diagnosis is that he is at heart a Community Organizer--someone who cannot help but reach out to all sides and always try to reach consensus.  Take some from the Left, some from the Right, and chart a reasonable middle course.

The problem is that Obama only listens to the Conventional Establishment as his "Left" and the Conservative activist Tea Partiers and pundits as his "Right".  Conventional wisdom in Washington is pretty Rightwing at this point.  We _always_ need to strengthen Defense and show overwhelming muscle in tackling every foreign situation, tax increases are _always_ disastrous for the economy, the government is _always_ too invasive, Liberals are _always_ wide-eyed fringe idealists, and Rightwing Democrats like Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln are _always_ to be applauded for their "open-minded moderation" for crossing party lines.  The ideal Conventional Wisdom "Democrat" is Joe Lieberman, who is about 15% Liberal, and the ideal Conventional Wisdom Republican is Orrin Hatch, who is about 97% Conservative.

So Obama listens to the Conventional Wisdom Left who tells him constantly that he cannot get much change, that maybe 20-30% of the change he promised is feasible.  And then he listens to the Right, who say that the country should change 400% IN THE OTHER DIRECTION (i.e. more Conservative than we even are now).  And they are the louder and more unified voice.  The result is that Obama gives us 5% change (positively or negatively) and thinks he has mostly appeased his "Left" while also deftly giving some concessions to the Right.  Genius.  I really believe that within this bubble, Obama honestly _thinks_ he is threading the needle and at the same time bringing real change to the system.  And I also believe that, since the Left is mad at him, and the Right is (always) mad at him, he thinks he is prudently in the middle doing a fine job.  Massive drop in approval rating?  M'eh, that's just what happens when you get a little tough on both sides.

And this is why the WH snipes at the (actual) Left.  Obama thinks he is spending his term meticulously determining the exact ratio of change to forge the perfect compromise between his bubble of the "Left" and the Right.  And then we complain that he is giving us nothing (5% is basically nothing--Obama himself said that McCain would have given us 5% change), and he cannot process this disgruntlement other than to conclude that we are greedy/unrealistic and we want everything immediately.  In his mind, he is giving his "Left" plenty and we should be ecstatic about it.  He even feels that the Right should be pretty happy with him, since after all he did split the difference evenly.

So everything else is out of the equation.  The fact that the Right is NOT INTERESTED IN ANY COMPROMISE is not processed because his entire philosophy revolves around getting consensus.  He doesn't accept that no consensus will ever, EVER be possible unless he completely capitulates 100% to the Conservative position.  The fact that the polls show the country way further to the Left than the Conventional Wisdom is not processed because he has already chosen the Left side of his Washington bubble to listen to.  And Tim Geithner and Rahm Emanuel's job is to keep him inside that bubble and never let him believe that there is anything to the Left of it (there literally isn't anything to the Right of the bubble, so they don't have that issue).  

If conventional wisdom changed, which would involve the Democratic Party standing up for Progressive values, the Progressive movement forcing its way to the big microphones, and the media performing actual journalism rather than Establishment stenography, I would bet that Obama would naturally begin to skew toward the Left, since his Washington bubble would widen Leftward, making the "middle" of the bubble further Left.  Ergo, do I think he is a hopeless Establishment-corporatist shill whose actual governing philosophy is closer to the Right than to the Center?  No.  But he wants to be in the middle, and the middle between Center-Right Wishy-Washy Academic and the KKK is pretty damn far Right.