– The climate deal itself, as explained in a NYT piece just now, and in unbelievable contrast to the utter collapse of the Copenhagen negotiations early in Obama’s term;

– The rapprochement with Cuba, marking the beginning of the end of the single stupidest (but hardest to change) aberration in modern U.S. foreign policy; and

– The international agreement with Iran, which in the short term offers (as I have argued at length) the best prospects for preventing Iran development of a nuclear weapon, and in the long run has the potential of being the beginning of the end of Iran’s destructive estrangement from the international order.

These things are not easy. Two hundred countries agreeing on anything! When two of the important ones are the United States and China! Plus Russia and India and Saudi Arabia… If you add to this the enactment of his health-care law you have to say: agree or disagree with these objectives (and I know that many of Obama’s critics view every one of them as a stab in America’s back), this is not the work of a pawn.