The Note: Mr. Speaker

Nov. 4, 2010— -- The ink may not be completely dry on 2010 races, but presumptive House Speaker John Boehner is wasting no time taking up the mantle of leadership.

Boehner plans to release a new document today issuing a challenge to President Barack Obama and setting the stage for the new Congressional session.

"President Obama must decide whether he will heed the will of the people and work with us to address their concerns, or continue on a path the people have rejected," Boehner writes. "If he joins us in listening to the people and acknowledges their demand for smaller, more accountable government, much can be achieved." (Boehner doesn't say what happens if the president does not "join" in.)

The 44-page document, titled "Pillars of New Majority," is a compilation of speeches the Ohio Republican delivered between June and October 2010 that, in his own words, "detail my vision of a principled new majority and the way in which it should serve our nation." http://bit.ly/afiTAe

In a Time Magazine cover story, Michael Grunwald and Jay Newton-Small write:

"For months Democrats lampooned him as a golf-addicted, lobbyist-encircled, chain-smoking Beltway insider with a weird orange tan and a radical right-wing agenda, the physical and political embodiment of everything Americans mistrusted about Republicans during the past two election cycles. ... The new Speaker, his allies say, is a levelheaded grownup, a pragmatic conservative with a sensitive side, a power broker but not a power addict, an unabashed institutionalist who has pledged to respect the rights of the minority, reduce the Speaker's authority to micromanage legislation and bring real democracy to the House."

Read The Note's political analysis for the day HERE.