A good chunk of the left thinks Barack Obama’s presidency has been something of a disappointment. There was so much promised that never materialized. We had the whole government for a year and we couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time by doing something other than healthcare reform. Sure, the economy imploded and the administration pivoted to that, but we could have made even more history. We lost Teddy Kennedy, and that was the end of the dreaming. Republicans guaranteed that the Obama agenda would be delivered stillborn.

So it’s a bit galling to find that Obama has found his inner progressive when his opposition is at its most powerful, when he can barely do a damn thing . But there he is. From gay rights to dope and immigration, from Cuba to Iran, he is struggling against the bonds imposed by a hostile Congress. Today, Barack offered one of his regrets and it is a day late and a dollar short:

President Barack Obama says if he could start his presidency over, he would have closed the Guantanamo Bay prison his first day.

Instead, the president ordered the detention center for terrorism suspects closed within a year. He says the politics around closure grew increasingly tough and “people got scared by the rhetoric.”

I guess he gets credit for being reflective, unlike some people I could name.