Late Saturday night, media outlets first reported that President Obama would sign onto a debt ceiling deal with large spending cuts and no promise of revenue, signaling a final concession that seemed unthinkable just a few days ago. Out of exasperation as much as curiosity, I e-mailed a Washington insider who happens to be among President Obama’s most loyal supporters. How, I asked, could Obama agree to such a lopsided deal? This person answered with a different question: What would I have done instead? It took me a few minutes to realize that I didn’t have an answer.

The broad outlines of this agreement have been clear for a while. And they’ve been clear because, as the date for reaching the debt ceiling approached, the White House lost nearly all of its leverage. The Republicans were willing to risk an economic catastrophe and Obama was not. Given that, I'm not sure the president in the final days should have pushed Republicans harder, thereby risking the immediate, devastating effects of government reaching its debt limit.

Meanwhile, the actual deal seems considerably better than reports early on Sunday suggested. It would reduce deficits in two stages – first, by enacting around $900 billion in cuts to discretionary spending; second, by calling for up to $1.5 trillion in additional deficit reduction. Congress would have the option of filling in the programmatic details of that $1.5 trillion, based on the recommendations from a new bipartisan commission. Absent that, or the approval of a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, automatic spending cuts would take effect.

Those automatic cuts would be divided equally between security and non-security spending--with Medicaid, Social Security, and programs serving the poor protected from reductions. Medicare benefits would be off-limits too, although Medicare providers and producers (doctors, device makers, etc.) would see their reimbursements fall. Those protections represent a key achievement by the administration: For much of Sunday, it appeared (to me, among other people) that Medicare was in line for sweeping, potentially severe cuts.

But those are also the details. Take a step back and look at the big picture. It still looks ugly.