WASHINGTON (AP) — On this night, President Barack Obama looked like a man who had escaped imminent defeat.

The Obama who made the case for military action in Syria on Tuesday night appeared more confident, more assured, perhaps even more relieved than the president who confronted the press corps twice during last week’s trip to Stockholm, Sweden, and St. Petersburg, Russia. Then Obama was defensive, arguing that the world, not he, had set a red line against Syria’s use of chemical weapons and maintaining it was not his credibility that was at stake if the U.S. did not respond to the breach of that red line.