"This office has a way of waking you up ... predispositions that don't match up with reality, [you] will find shaken up pretty quick, because reality has a way of asserting itself."
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Barack Obama was talking about the White House, slightly loftier surrounds than the opposition leader's office Peter Dutton now calls home.
But with parliament to open tomorrow, it's still unclear which of his predispositions will be on show.
Will the kinder, gentler Dutton promised in June emerge, or the Dutton most voters are accustomed to: a hardline conservative with a history of inflammatory wedge politics?
Already we've seen signs of both.
A cross-section of his colleagues sincerely praise him as decent man and a bridge builder, though Dutton has long seemed aware that perception does not translate to the voters.
He has blamed that on the portfolios foisted on him, as though the real Peter is distinct from Dutton the Home Affairs Minister.
"It is good to be in front of the cameras where I can smile, and maybe show a different side to what I show when I talk about border protection," he said, launching a challenge against Malcolm Turnbull in 2018.
The emergence of Scott Morrison through the middle then, and Dutton's subsequent return to Home Affairs, meant voters were never given the chance to see whether that bore out.
Now, they will be. Four years later, he has finally ascended to the Liberal leadership hinting at the same thing.
He made a mistake boycotting the Apology to the Stolen Generations, Dutton conceded at his first press conference, but only out of his passion for Indigenous victims of crime.
He was open to stronger action on integrity.
He wouldn't repeat his description of the Biloela children as "anchor babies", made just weeks earlier.
Then that night, he joined Sky-after-dark and dodged questions on whether he would deny a "climate catastrophe".
His pivot: promising to "shine a light" on the "extremism" parroted by teachers.
So which is the true Dutton?
In one sense, it doesn't matter; a politician's worldview behind close doors is meaningless if it is not reflected in public.
But the answer may provide insight into which path he will naturally gravitate towards when the pressure is on.
That pressure will be immediate; the Coalition is under fire over revelations it pressured Home Affairs officials to publish news of an asylum seeker boat arrival on election day, in its desperate final throes.
Dutton, who had long resisted speaking about "on water matters", was in the thick of it, urging voters not to "risk Australia's national security with Labor" .
And a severely depleted moderate wing may struggle to temper their leader if his instinct is to indulge a culture war already being stoked by conservative MPs.
Dutton has long been compared to another hardline conservative-minister-cum-Liberal-leader.
Tony Abbott was warned to shift from firebrand to statesman after toppling Turnbull, though his brutal template ultimately proved effective - albeit creating the least popular Prime Minister-elect in Australian history.
But the intervening decade - plagued by inertia on climate, exasperation over revolving-door leadership, and declining trust in institutions - means Dutton must woo a very different electorate to the last one facing a Liberal opposition.
Climate and integrity-focused independents seized a host of Liberal seats previously thought unlosable. Even Labor was not immune, the Greens edging past them in some inner-city seats, and threatening in others.
So blocking action on climate change - let alone joking about rising sea levels in the Pacific - may not be the best political response.
Whether Dutton or his party room believe that is unclear. We'll begin to find out from tomorrow.