This week’s edition of

The Economist

shows a pensive President Obama towering (“presiding,” even)

. Sarah Palin, decked out in leather, waves as her motorcycle exits to the (far) right. Frontrunner Mitt Romney has Jon Huntsman in a headlock, while Tim Pawlenty levels Newt Gingrich with a devastating right hand and a gun-toting Michele Bachmann waves to Obama’s knees.

The caption? “…and yet I could still lose.”

Here’s the easy way to write this column: I run through a litany of the most recent list of strange things about the GOP field: Newt Gingrich’s

and Sarah Palin’s gubernatorial emails are a hoot, etc, etc. I could, but you’re getting more than enough sideshow coverage. Next frame.

After all, the caption is

far more

interesting. Obama could lose. He might well lose, if the economic recovery doesn’t accelerate soon.

as well as anyone that we’re still replacing

. If he loses in 2012, the stock market will have authored his political epitaph.

And that's the much harder column to write. What would it mean if he lost? What sort of legacy would he leave? Imagine that it's Jan. 21, 2013, and President Herman Cain is already pushing a bill to roll back Obama's Affordable Care Act. How will we remember Obama? Since Obama's emergence on the national scene, countless pundits have branded him as an enigma. He's famously hard to reduce to simple ideological battle lines.

Perhaps we’ll remember him as a progressive hero, the man who asked Congress to end the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Obama pushed for regulations to prevent future Wall Street skullduggery. He set timelines for ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and won a Nobel Prize for returning the United States to the international negotiating table. He fought to save GM and Chrysler (and countless jobs). Most notably, he steered a broad reform of the American health care system to expand coverage options and reduce system-wide inefficiencies. While not as forceful with Congress as other progressive presidents (take Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example) Obama shares their political vision. Whether or not he gets a second term, we’ll remember him as someone who asked us to dream big, to imagine how America could be better than it is today.

But wait! This doesn’t capture everything about Obama; he’s also a tough-minded realist. During the 2008 campaign, he promised that he would strike unilaterally within Pakistan in pursuit of terrorists—and

. As president, he committed extra resources to pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, a decision that led to Bin Laden’s death last month. In addition, he engaged our military in new fronts by expanding the Predator drone program and pushing for NATO action in Libya. When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, his defense of American military power shocked many of his most “hopey-changey” supporters. When it comes to international relations, Obama will be remembered for his practicality and toughness.

He needed to be forceful, given the mess he inherited. While it’s easy to forget it now, the Bush Administration left him: 1) two wars in danger of becoming quagmires, 2) a recession that was gaining momentum, and 3) record federal deficits. Even if he loses his re-election bid, Obama will be remembered for the progress he made at addressing (at least) the first two of these three national crises. Just as President George H.W. Bush is now praised for making tough decisions that cost him re-election in 1992, history will be kind to Obama’s record.

Does this matter? It should. While we’re accustomed to thinking about politics on a short-term basis, we all know that the long-term view matters much more. Nothing great was ever accomplished in a single 24-hour news cycle. National crises don’t disappear just because we want them to. Progress takes time, so we ought to look for leaders who take the long view of our problems. It’s up to the President to remind Americans of this—but it’s also up to us to remember the big picture.

Conor Williams is a weekly columnist for The Washington Post's "PostPartisan," blog and his own blog at www.conorpwilliams.com. A Kalamazoo native, he also writes occasional columns for the Kalamazoo Gazette. For more, follow Conor on Twitter: @conorpwilliams.