And that began with reaching out on the Recovery Act and on health care reform and on issue after issue, and continued through his efforts in negotiations with the Speaker of the House to try to find a balanced, sweeping grand bargain approach to dealing with our deficit and debt issues.
Earlier, Mr Obama said he would had preferred to resolve the fiscal cliff through a "grand bargain" that dealt with both long-term spending and tax issues.
But in private, some see a bargain: America stops standing up to Russia in Europe, in return for Kremlin concessions on issues that America really cares about, such as a new nuclear-weapons deal.