Obama pops a morning-after pill

Most progressives feel pretty good for the moment about where the president ended up in the contraception coverage controversy: upholding free access to contraception, providing an avenue for religious opt-out, leaving the GOP to feverishly conceive new contra-contraception positions.  The question is, how did Obama get there?  Brilliant plan? Lucky stumble?  Even as James Fallows' copious mid-course report card on the Obama presidency hit the internets, we had a tantalizing new chess master or pawn? conundrum

Andrew Sullivan, natch, seemed to come down heavy on the chess master side. But how heavy? In a generally judicious and well-documented Newsweek piece, this ambiguously-phrased claim stuck out:

Chait on the chess master, and one missing piece

On the "Fallows question" of whether Obama, in his 3-year combat with Republicans, has been more chess master or pawn, Jonathan Chait lays down an opening premise:

There’s a pattern in the way President Obama reacts to his opponents. He always begins with the outstretched hand, taking their goals (and complaints) at face value. But if they prove unwilling to meet halfway, he assails them for their intransigence and draws sharp lines.

That, however, is merely a statement of Obama's default strategy.  On the question of whether it worked (or is working) in the battle over deficit reduction, taxes, stimulus, and long-term spending priorities, Chait, like Fallows, takes a split decision. He thinks Obama was insane to pursue a "grand bargain" with Boehner, arguing that it should have been plain that there was no way that Congressional Republicans would move off their tax absolutism.  At the same time, he thinks that Obama has advanced his political ends in the broader battle:

Judging Obama by his own standards

Many of us who are emotionally invested in the Obama presidency have read epic defenses of his record (Chait, Ezra Klein, Sullivan) and scathing or wistful indictments.  James Fallows has distilled the strongest arguments on each side (in large part through the mouths of past and present Democratic elected officials and aides) and laid them in the scales. His question: is Obama "chess master or pawn"? Is he executing a long-term strategy to restore a progressive approach to the nation's problems or has he let himself get rolled by Republican obstructionism?

On the one side, there are the mammoth but still fragile and equivocal legislative accomplishments, the prevention of economic collapse, and a restoration of American soft power abroad that Fallows presents unequivocally as masterful. On the other, other, the usual suspects: a too-small stimulus, a coddling of the banks, passivity in the face of unprecedented filibustering and holds on nominees, a ceding of the message wars to Republicans demonizing his initiatives .

Fallows' finger on his near-evenly weighted scales is hope for the future. Some months ago, when Democrats were writhing as Obama hurtled toward the tax-free deficit reduction deal agreed to under the gun of federal default, Fallows wrote to me, "We will hope that the qualities we admire in Obama outweigh the ones that make us nervous." He finds evidence in the GOP's short-term December payroll tax cut cave that that is happening. Obama has learned in the past half-year how to be president:

My impression from recent evidence is that he has found his footing, and has come to understand how to use the constrained but still real powers of a president facing congressional opposition—just in time. 

Fallows' final point is undeniable: Obama's legacy depends on re-election; Republicans will wipe most of his accomplishments away if they win in November. Taking that as a given, though, I'd like to add one voice to the judgmental chorus: Obama's, in late 2008 and early 2009.  It is instructive at this midstream moment to judge Obama by standards he set for himself at the outset.