But he is also, strikingly, less "realist." The Obama of 2009 was prepared to soft-pedal scratchy issues like human rights and democracy in order to persuade China to take action on currency and trade issues, and to accept a more active role in global decision-making. It didn't work: Obama accomplished little on his trip to China that fall, and the White House felt that he had been ill-treated. Engagement looked like a one-way street. When Obama returned to the region in the fall of 2011, he pointedly declared that those who seek to rule by "one man" or "by committee" neglect "the ultimate source of power and legitimacy -- the will of the people." The administration has also recognized, as one official puts it, that "you can hold your ground, and still succeed." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deeply offended her Chinese hosts when she negotiated for the freedom of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, but managed at the same time to conduct the planed Strategic Dialogue.
In his 2009 Nobel peace prize acceptance speech, Obama mocked those who opposed engagement policy in favor of "the satisfying purity of indignation." One of the White House mantras of those early years was "consequentialism" -- the principle that you don't criticize other regimes if it won't do any good. But as Obama has learned the limits of engagement, consequentialism has been consigned to the lexicographical doghouse. Clinton's sharp criticism of Russia's rigged parliamentary elections last year was bound to make relations with Russia worse -- and it did -- but by then the "reset" policy was already dead, and there was nothing to gain by restraint.
And so Obama's worldview has evolved in a distinctive way, if much more subtly than did George W. Bush's, which lurched from realism to a kind of magic idealism, and then back to something more traditional. Obama has become both tougher and more moralistic -- more realistic, yet less realist. Two administration officials I spoke to said that they expected that, should he win a second term, Obama would show growing confidence about delivering tough judgments on autocratic states. For the moment, this development has made him a very difficult target for his challenger to hit. Romney has criticized Obama's decision to remain silent in the early days of Iran's abortive Green Revolution in 2009 -- a classic case of the dynamics of engagement -- but he can't find much material to latch on to from recent years. Romney seems to have concluded that while he can still fire broad rhetorical salvos -- "apology tour," "lead from behind" -- on specific issues he has little choice but to agree with the president.
Alas, there are no moral victories, or intellectual victories, or even substantive victories, in presidential elections. The debate likely didn't change voters' minds, and Obama didn't score a knockout, or even a decision on points. Since then, the poll numbers haven't moved Obama's way. It appears that each debate mattered less than the one before. Obama must trust to fate, and the ground game.
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