May 21 (Bloomberg) -- No matter who is the chairman of the Democratic Party, President Barack Obama is running the show. Not so in the Republican Party, where the chairman, Michael Steele, is the putative leader.

Emerging from a rocky few months to celebrate his First 100 Days as head of the Republican National Committee on May 19, Steele didn’t say so much about what he would do for Republicans as what “Obama’s reign of error” had done to the country. He mentioned Obama some 30 times in his speech. What Republicans would do, he mentioned almost no times.

Steele’s reign so far can be described as Obama-Lite. In looking for their titular head, Republicans thought simplistically: The Democrats won with a black man. Let’s try that. In an overwhelmingly white party, there weren’t many candidates who fit the bill. In January, Steele was elected.

Steele, 50, thinks of himself as a shadow president, as his own Hundred Days landmark shows. In his speech, he spoke about his rise from humble origins -- the son of a woman who took in laundry -- to his current exalted position.

In contrast to “shabby and classless” Democrats, Steele is leading “with dignity.” With a drum roll, he pronounced Obama’s honeymoon over as well as an official end to “the era of apologizing.”

“It is done,” he shouted. “We have turned the corner on regret.”

Bush, Cheney Sorrowful?

Was there a Pleistocene Age of sorrow from the Republican Party that we missed? Has former President George W. Bush regretted anything he did, or former Vice President Dick Cheney? Is Donald Rumsfeld lamenting sending too few troops to fight too big a war or putting militaristic biblical passages on the cover of his daily briefing book to stiffen the president’s spine?

Perhaps Steele has sniffed out a coming onslaught of GOP regrets over voting “No” en bloc on Obama’s legislation and is nipping it in the bud.

Or maybe he was referring to his own sniveling before the altar of Rush Limbaugh after calling him an “entertainer” and his broadcasts “incendiary.” Steele took it back when he realized radio talk-show hosts and cable entertainers like Rush, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck outrank him.

Loves That Camera

The camera doesn’t always love Steele, but he can’t resist the camera, or a microphone. On a radio show, he managed to link Obama’s search for a Supreme Court justice to Miss California’s troubles with a beauty pageant judge. He goes Big Tent (he had to retract comments he made in a magazine interview supporting a woman’s right to choose) and Little Tent (he suggested opposition to gay marriage can help attract young voters by showing them it’s bad for business).

In a speech in Savannah, Georgia, he explained: “All of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse.” He added, “Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”

His mouth is big enough to accommodate his foot. He offered Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, an Indian-American, some “slum love” and threatened to withhold primary support from moderates like Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, who’s running for the Senate.

Bright Light Fades

He fired staff and hired consultants, including Curt Anderson, the impresario who prepared the Tara-like setting for Jindal’s response to Obama’s February address to Congress. Prior to that, Jindal was a bright light in the party.

Then there’s Steele’s “hip-hop outreach.” He called Obama’s economic-stimulus bill “bling-bling,” as if channeling Snoop Dogg trying to get the brothers to buy what he’s selling. It has become so pronounced that Obama elicited one of the biggest laughs at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when he shouted out to Steele, acknowledging that the chairman was in the house, “or as he would say, ‘in the heezie.’”

In his 100-day re-launch, Steele is toning down his phat moves. Last weekend he told a group of Republicans they don’t have to “wear their pants low to be cool.”

To Steele, Republicans are already back, maybe not among “the chattering classes” but among real people “in states all across America.”

“Change comes in a tea bag!” he declared, dredging up last month’s fizzled populist revolt led by Fox News.

Identity Politics

Real people must not be in any Gallup surveys. According to a new poll, 53 percent of Americans now identify with the Democratic Party while 39 percent identify with the Republicans, a five-point loss for the GOP since 2001.

I’ve only found one Republican who doesn’t wince at the mention of Steele -- a gubernatorial candidate in Virginia who’s getting money from the RNC. Otherwise, Republicans blame him for all of the above and for losing the House election to replace Kirsten Gillibrand, who succeeded Hillary Clinton in the Senate.

Being a successful party chairman is simple: fund winners, raise money, and don’t spend any yourself. Without raising large sums, Steele spent big, including an $18,500 makeover of his office. And he’s had no winners.

With a dwindling minority, tough congressional races coming up and a popular president, Steele may soon find out that his own era of apologizing is just getting started.

(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 21, 2009 00:00 EDT