I sure understand why people feel powerless and angry about the vast forces that control our lives and over which we seem to have only fitful control - big government and big business. But it seems to me vital to keep our heads and remain focused on what substantively can be done to address real problems, and judge Obama on those terms. When you do, you realize that the left's "disgruntleist" faction needs to take a chill pill.

Take Iran. Everyone - part from still-delusional neocons - accepts that this is a hugely difficult issue. To read the neocon right, you'd think all our problems would be solved by the president declaring the regime "evil" and launching military strikes all over the country. Sound familiar? In the real world, most of us understand that the military option is madness, that the machinery of repression is strong enough for the coup regime to survive - but only just. Since Obama was elected, the legitimacy of the Tehran regime has been shredded - and I'd argue that removing America from the equation helped Iran's opposition, rather than stymying it. Most of us knew, moreover, that Russia and China would oppose any and all sanctions.

But in fact, after a painstaking process in which Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have been successfully cornered in world opinion as the transgressors, sanctions, with Russia's and China's support, have passed the UN Security Council. More focused sanctions are in force against the financial interests of the Revolutionary Guards, and will soon come from the US Congress and European capitals. The price of Ahmadi's paranoia will be high, which may explain his recent fulminations. Will this pragmatic step resolve the situation immediately? Of course not. Does it make a lot of pragmatic sense? Yes it does. Is it the best we can truly do? I suspect so. In other words: Obama and Clinton got difficult shit done. I think part of the message of "Goodbye To All That" as a core rationale for the Obama presidency is acknowledging when a president does difficult, messy but necessary things.

My own provisional judgment is the same on the economy, where Obama's actions helped prevent what could have been a Second Great Depression. Historians will fight over this, but it seems pretty clear to me right now that Obama picked most of the least worst options and is prepared, unlike the GOP, to speak honestly about the deficit in the next two years. In the bank bailouts (much more successful than we first thought), the stimulus (still working), the health insurance reform (a real start on a deep and vexing problem across the developed world), and even the swarm of issues around Gitmo (torture has ended, while necessary, lawful military detentions and renditions continue), you see the same pattern of emotionally unsatisfying but structurally deep changes in the orientation of the ship of state. This is very gradual change we can believe in.