The Long Play

It remains Obama's defining characteristic, as Marc acknowledges:

It seems to me that most of Obama's concessions to political reality are temporary and designed to further other goals; he's deferential to Congress here -- he asserts his power there. He meets with Republicans to build a long-term relationship. He lets the House roll the Senate on the budget. He intervenes, surgically, when necessary.  We're obsessed with short-term, short-term, short-term -- whether Obama gets France to spend more money or commit more troops to Afghanistan -- and we ignore the year's worth of fundamental changes to the world that he packed into that week.