Restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba? What’s with all this eruption of sanity in Washington?

The conventional wisdom, at least in Britain, seems to be that Barack Obama’s presidency has been a desperate disappointment. That is partly a reflection of the extravagant – impossibly so – expectation that accompanied him to the White House and partly, of course, a simple reminder of political reality.

And yet it seems to me that you can make a persuasive case that he’s been a better President than his predecessor (a dismally low bar, granted) but also a better President than Bill Clinton. This, true, reflects the gravity of the times. Clinton complained in his autobiography that he’d been deprived the chance of tackling the kind of challenges that secure a place in the history books. His years in office were too sunny, too fat, for that.

Obama, by contrast, has been a firefighting president. He said he’d end two wars and he has, more or less, delivered that promise. Whether you reckon his judgement right or not he has, more or less, done what he said he would do.