So long as the global economy continues to recover, that remains Obama's No. 1 claim to successful leadership. Nothing else even comes close.

China's headlong rush to industrialize was pursued with the most Marxist of prejudices - bending nature to man's will. That's a desperately hard trick to pull off when one fifth of humanity, having previously subsisted on 7 percent of the world's freshwater supply, decides that it wants to instantaneously increase its caloric intake.

So long as the global economy continues to recover, that remains Obama's No. 1 claim to successful leadership. Nothing else even comes close.