In the days leading up to a last-minute deal Friday night averting a government shutdown, the president’s immediate tactical goal seemed to be holding himself out as the one reasonable man in an unreasonable town. While the rest of Washington squabbled, he presented himself as the grown-up above a messy fray that would alienate voters scratching their heads over how the government almost could not get its act together to pay the bills and keep the lights on.

The effect, though, was to obscure his own philosophy and to raise the question of what he wants a second term for. “He needs to be very careful to avoid leaving voters with the impression that his sphinx-like aloofness is all that liberalism has to offer,” said Yuval Levin, a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and a former domestic policy aide to President George W. Bush…

“He’s frustrating,” said Tim Carpenter, national director of Progressive Democrats of America. “He’s somebody who came out of our movement. He’s certainly well read about progressive ideas. But he talks a good game. He compromises way too early. He surrenders in the third quarter of many of these fights.”