Whether it’s recognizing a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, negotiating with the Taliban, releasing five Guantanamo Bay detainees or imposing new regulations on carbon emissions, one thing is constant: The inner President Obama is being unleashed.

During his 2008 campaign, there was a lot of debate over whether Obama was more likely to govern from the left, or more moderately. He spoke a lot about breaking with Washington consensus – the type of thinking that led to the Iraq War, made the U.S. government reflexively pro-Israel, shied away from diplomacy, and failed to address the issue of global warming.