#1 They were NEVER as coddling during the 80's as they were during the 2000's. In fact, much of their early 80's music was quite dark. Earnest I'll give you, but besides Where The Streets (and thats stretching it), where else in their 80's catalog do they don a Savior Band mentality? Sure, Bono was making his political points, but they were mostly angry. You could say 80's was Old Testament Bono, and this decade is New Testament Bono. But one thing is pretty clear to me, U2 weren't writing "Savior" songs, songs that were designed for comforting us, for letting us know everything will be alright, that let us know how beautiful we all are. They might have written about the Savior on October, but it was all about THEIR spiritual crisis, not about OURS. That's the difference. I don't think U2 were even about to go down that road, it was mostly their ATYCLB album being reinterpreted after 9/11 that made them change. All of a sudden, it was like Bono finally made that metamorphosis into Jesus Bono, the Bono every U2 hater had wrongly pegged him as, but this time he was actually turning into what they always had wrong about him. At least that's my take on it.
#2 I don't think that everything they are writing is EXACTLY the kind of stuff they want to write. Like I said before, I feel like they've strapped themselves with an unnecessary obligation to be the Savior Band. On NLOTH, I don't think they had a clear direction, but at least it was something different. However, that unclear direction became lost forever once they decided to add the "savior songs" - I'll let you decided which ones i mean. It's almost like they needed people to be reminded of their responsibility to the current human condition, to let the masses know, "hey, we're there for you." Very nice of them, but I think they played that hand one too many times during the BOMB era. The coddling has become tiresome.
As you said, if the mainstream didn't like them, they would screw off most likely. I find that to be quite sad. There are many out there who have never heard the song Slug, and you know what? The song lives on, it doesn't matter. A hundred years from now, it won't matter. The music is what survives, not a crummy position in the charts. If U2 are driven solely by what they can sell, then there is no way in hell they are making the music they want to make.