Observing Obama

Turns out Barack Obama is the bill of goods America thought it was buying.

Little about Obama in his first year as president has come as a shock. The cautious, cerebral, enigmatic man who sought the White House is largely the same one who occupies it. For all the history-changing wonder of the election of the country's first black president, most of the surprises have come from events, not his approach to them.

From the beginning, with its inaugural excitement, friendlier majorities in Congress than any chief executive since Lyndon Johnson, two wars, a warming planet and economic challenges unrivaled since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to the end, with fractious partisan sniping, a dramatically fallen approval rating and his first major victory still to come — Obama then is basically Obama now, only grayer and more tired.

But 12 months' worth of watching the president put his signature style to work governing, instead of campaigning, provides a crisper picture. So, what have we learned? For one thing, that he's a master of nuance with a “but” in his approach to nearly everything.

Ten observations: