For all that, the Democratic-leaning media have successfully managed to paint Boehner as "Mr No", a blinkered defender of the tax breaks and privileges of "billionaires and millionaires". In fact, taxes have gone up drastically to pay for the 19 per cent increase in public spending under Obama, and all the Republicans are presently doing is attempting to prevent any more damage to the wealth of individual Americans.

In order to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of 2012, Boehner's House Republicans agreed to no fewer than 13 tax increases which came into effect on January 1. The top marginal tax rate for incomes over $400,000 rose from 35 per cent to 39.6 per cent; the social security portion of the payroll tax rose from 4.2 per cent to 6.2 per cent; personal exemptions of adjusted gross income of over $300,000 were phased out; the tax rates on investment income rose from 15 per cent to 20 per cent; inheritance tax rose from 35 per cent to 40 per cent, and no fewer than six tax increases connected to Obamacare were instituted.

Although the White House is trying to portray Boehner as intransigent, he has merely been fighting a belated, desperate rearguard action, several of the biggest battles already having been lost. The true intransigence, as so often with this administration, comes from Obama himself, who has taken his (wafer-thin and smaller than 2008) election victory of 2012 as a mandate to bully the House Republicans, while offering only paltry reductions in the really big-ticket items on the national budget.

What the Wall Street Journal has nicknamed "Obamageddon" might well win him some seats in the 2014 mid-terms, especially if the cuts really start to hit frontline services and the American public overwhelmingly blames the Republicans for something that the president himself invented. Yet it is in the nature of American politics that ultimately the buck stops with whomever is in the Oval Office; it's the sitting president who is credited or blamed for the state of the nation. Obama might therefore win each of these individual political battles, but if the sequester were to hurt ordinary Americans for long periods of time — quite apart from what the defence cuts will do to America's national interest — in terms of the historical perception of his presidency, he will lose the war.