In this case, they've decided to argue about whether the president went on an apology tour, whether he thinks America is exceptional, and whether he leads from in front or behind. It's depressing.

So granting again that his policies have had some benefits, what costs are going unacknowledged?

Let us confront some of them.

Yes, Osama bin Laden was killed. But at what price? Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder report that Pakistan's response to the bin Laden raid made that country less stable and its nuclear arsenal less secure. And the fake vaccination program the CIA sponsored in a failed attempt to get bin Laden family DNA is certain to make already paranoid populations in developing countries even more averse to legitimate public health programs than they already are -- a potential tragedy that also has the potential to make Americans less safe if a given disease spreads.

Yes, President Obama's drone program has killed lots of al Qaeda operatives. But at what price? The dead innocents, including dozens if not hundreds of women and children, are most worrisome. The radicalizing effect of these attacks are next. Al Qaeda uses them as a recruitment tool. Folks whose innocent children or spouses were killed by American weapons need no recruiter to radicalize them. How many Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalis, Iraqis, and Afghans would mail anthrax to retaliate if given the opportunity? And in a world where technology is permitting fewer people to do more harm with less every year, how long till they'll possess an equivalent capability? Even anonymous officials in the Obama Administration worry that the drone program creates more terrorists than it eliminates, but they aren't permitted to come forward with their concerns, partly because the president has kept even the existence of the program classified, even as he permits his chosen spokespeople to defend it in the press.

Yes, the Libyan civil war in which President Obama involved us helped topple the Gaddafi government. But at what price? Every strongman who saw the regime give up its nuclear ambitions during the Bush Administration, only to be overthrown by his successor, is that much more likely to pursue its own nuclear insurance. Inside Libya, the conflict turned out to be a humanitarian disaster. Islamist influence in the country is on the rise. The conflict was overwhelmingly unpopular among Libya's neighbors, who are now less favorably disposed toward NATO and the United States as a result. And the worst consequences have been in Mali, where spillover from the Libyan conflict resulted in a coup and brutal crackdown by Islamist militias.

Yes, President Obama's decision to escalate a cyber-attack on Iran perhaps set back its nuclear program, or even delayed an Israeli strike on its facilities. But as my colleague Robert Wright points out, he did so after declaring that cyber-aggression is equivalent to conventional acts of war. As Bob noted: "There are times when the exposure of hypocrisy is particularly costly. One is when you face the dawn of a new technological age and you're trying to establish rules of the road that will benefit countries like yours in particular. A reasonably effective global norm against cyber-warfare wasn't an impossible dream, but thanks to President Obama, it may be now."