The left has spent a lot of time spinning its wheels the last two weeks arguing about why Obama’s presidency is such a failure. The dominant arguments seem to be: (1) He’s not liberal enough; (2) He’s liberal enough, but he’s not a dirty enough fighter; (3) His failings are temperamental–he doesn’t emote, connect, use the bully pulpit, etc.

All three of these arguments are the standard-issue failure rationalizations of politics. They’re basically what conservatives and Republicans said in 1992 and 1996, what liberals and Democrats said in 2004, and, most recently, what conservatives and Republicans said in 2008. The key difference is that in the Republican version of this argument, there’s usually a bitter debate between factions arguing that the candidate would have won if only he’d been more conservative or less conservative–depending on the viewpoint of the pundit making the argument. I haven’t seen any Dems arguing that Obama’s problem is that he’s been too liberal. Otherwise, both sides think they only loose because they’re too pure and the other guys are too mean. And for whatever reason, people love arm-chair psychologizing presidents, as if demeanor trumps policy completely. None of these rationalizations for Obama’s failures are particularly illuminating.

But a couple things strike me.

First, it’s odd that Democrats suddenly find the debt ceiling fight to be the sine qua non of liberal principles. Because when you jump up to 30,000 feet, Obama’s liberal accomplishments have been pretty impressive:

* He passed a giant healthcare law, giving the left much–though by no means all–of what it wanted. He did this in the face of bipartisan opposition; spent enormous political capital on it; and has suffered very steep political consequences as a result. It’s hard to square his bruising, year-long campaign for Obamacare with the contention that Obama compromises too much and doesn’t like to fight.

* He presided over the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He didn’t push the button himself, but he made sure it happened.

* He has generally expanded the role of government.

As a top-line list of accomplishments, that’s not bad. But it doesn’t include the Big One: Obama has laid the groundwork to end both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of the consequences. Once upon a time, these wars were the single most important thing in Democratic politics.

Yes, I understand that from the Democratic perspective, Obama hasn’t ended them fast enough. Yes, he continued the presence in Iraq longer than they would have liked. But realistically speaking, of the three people who could have become president in 2008–Obama, Clinton, or McCain–Obama is the only one who would have gotten us to the point we’re at now in those two conflicts. He hasn’t been as liberal as many Democrats would like, but he has been much, much more dovish than Clinton or McCain would have been. It seems like that should count for quite a lot.

(And I understand that liberals could make a list of complaints about action items Obama didn’t deliver on–warrantless wiretaps, the Bush tax cuts, Gitmo, etc. I’m simply making the case that they ought to be, if not ecstatic, then quietly pleased with what they’ve gotten from him.)

So what good rationalizations are there to be made for Obama? (That is, if you discount the conservative critique, which I assume most liberals do.) I think there are two, though I haven’t seen any liberals making them.

(1) Obama is a hostage to events. By any measure, the last 36 months have been brutal for the entire world. Obama’s the president, not King of the Markets, and the U.S. is suffering not just from entitlement bloat, but from a financial crisis and a housing collapse, the latter of which could take decades to work out. On top of that, Europe is a complete disaster and even in the best of times, would be a drag on the world economy. On top of that, China has its own housing problems, not to mention looming demographic catastrophe. No president, pursuing any other set of policies, could have reasonably expected much better results than we’re seeing now.

(2) Obama is not a very good president. For whatever reason–strategic foolishness, political naivete, or maybe he’s just not that bright–Obama simply isn’t very good at the job. He loses control of issues by handing process off to Congress (Obamacare); he miscalculates political advantage (not passing his own debt ceiling increase because he wanted to hang this one on the Republicans); he just doesn’t have the skills/instincts/intelligence/take your pick to perform the job ably.

If I were a Democratic partisan, I’d be making the case for (1) now, and then for (2) after he loses the election. They’re both more helpful to the movement than the standard trio of rationalizations.

One final note: Jonathan Chait makes a case for something like (1) in this piece, where he argues that Obama still has a perfectly clear path to victory in 2012. I agree, to some extent. A sitting president always has a puncher’s chance. And Obama will have to run an insurgent campaign, as Chait suggests. (Though the fact that Team Obama spent part of this week trying to torpedo Mitt Romney tells you something about how smart they aren’t. Forget the current polling: Romney is the most beatable Republican in the field. He’s terrible at retail politics, has a glass jaw, and would not be able to take advantage of the two big issues–Obamacare and jobs–because of his “accomplishments” as governor and job-killer at Bain Capital. Team Obama should be doing anything they can to help Romney get the nomination. The fact that they misunderstand the nature of their Republican challengers ought to be really unsettling to down-ticket Dems.)

What I would caution Chait from doing, however, is putting too much stock in Obama’s base approval numbers. As a statistical matter, they’re skewed by the enormous disparity between black approval and everyone else. Which means that even if black voters turn out like everyone else (not often the case) in swing-states where blacks make up less than the national average (WI, IN, for starters) he’ll be at a much greater disadvantage than his approval numbers show.

(Also, this assumes there’s not Bradley Effect in approval surveys. I’m not sure I’d believe that.)