Of course, Obama has had a lousy run of luck -- but now his luck has changed. The raid on bin Laden's lair has accomplished something beyond the disposing of Public Enemy No. 1: It has freed Obama from having to prove his toughness. He can advocate "soft" policies without being seen as soft. Having broken the rules with such eclat, he can now safely argue for the rules he believes in.

What does that mean in practice? I put the question to a senior White House official, who e-mailed back, "We are actively thinking about exactly that question but have not yet come to any conclusions." In a subsequent phone conversation, he speculated on the effect of the raid on other powers: "To the extent that people thought we were in decline or indecisive or preoccupied with internal matters, they'll have to revisit that." That's probably true, and it can't be bad to make China think twice about whether the United States is in decline -- though the Chinese will probably draw their own conclusions about that from our deficit and growth rate. And in any case, spooking economic competitors hardly counts as fulfillment of Obama's transformational promise.

You can see why Obama's aides would be as perplexed as they are inspired by the opportunity presented by the killing of bin Laden. Obama still won't have the money to engage in large-scale nation building or dramatically improve public health in Africa. He still can't get a nuclear test-ban treaty through the Senate. Neither Hamas nor Israel will prove any more willing to make peace with one another than they were last week. Obama could use bin Laden's death as a pretext to accelerate the departure of troops from Afghanistan, as a great many critics of the war have suggested, but he seems to genuinely believe that U.S. forces must remain in Afghanistan over the next three years in order to prevent the Taliban from taking over and offering a new base of operations to al Qaeda and other jihadists. (Still, the president may be under increased pressure to use the strategic review this summer to leave Afghanistan faster than currently planned.)

But all of this is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The whole hard-soft formulation rests on fear: fear that a remorseless enemy is taking our measure, and must not find us wanting. The Bush administration mercilessly exploited that national mood in the aftermath of 9/11 in order to underwrite its bellicose policies and demonize its critics. Obama understood that well; in that 2007 speech, he called for an end to "the color-coded politics of fear."

Those politics didn't end with Obama's election; look no further than the fear-mongers who shouted down the effort to try Guantánamo detainees in civil court. But even if bin Laden's death doesn't put an end to al Qaeda, let alone the larger jihadist threat, it does give Obama a chance to lift that suffocating mantle of fear. It gives him the chance to say that Islamic fundamentalism is a threat like other threats the United States has faced and will face, and that he will take the measures required to deal with it as he does with other threats -- all without facing the damning charge of endangering the national security.

Maybe he can even give the very idea of "threat" a rest. Obama can remind the American people of the opportunities that lie before them. In retrospect, the Cairo speech of June 2009 offered a false dawn -- but now the real dawn of Arab liberation, with all its attendant dangers and possible drawbacks, has arrived. The fear that the Arab street revered bin Laden has proved baseless; the targeted murder of al Qaeda's leader by American special forces acting in a Muslim country has barely provoked a peep. Obama can embrace the forces of change less hesitantly than he has, can push harder in stalemated countries like Yemen and Bahrain. He can look beyond the Middle East to talk about enhanced relations with the rising powers -- especially the democratic powers -- of Asia and Latin America. He can confront head-on the all-important issue of America's global competitiveness. He can talk about his old friend the U.N., and maybe even spare a helicopter or two for peacekeeping forces. Obama can, as he said in August 2007, "turn the page."

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