Without ultimate victory in the long-heralded and hard-fought battle over United States healthcare reforms, it was widely predicted that Barack Obama's presidency would be as good as a broken ankle on a one-legged duck.
With his signature barely dry on the legal documents, bringing into law sweeping changes that will afford healthcare for almost every American - and in so doing achieve what has long been dreamed of by generations of US leaders and certainly every Democratic president since Harry Truman - it is still being said that his Administration may be imperilled.
This is not the fanciful holler of a raucous and passionate opposition, but rather the considered view of an informed and ostensibly neutral commentariat. The president may have won a stunning battle last week, but in the process he may have so weakened his political capital as to make "winning the war" a long-odds proposition.
On Tuesday last, the American House of Representatives narrowly passed what has been described as the biggest social legislation in four decades by 219 votes to 212.
The $US940 billion reforms are designed to extend healthcare to 32 million Americans not currently covered.
They will ensure 95% of under-65 US citizens and legal residents will have health insurance; will require almost all Americans to buy health insurance or face fines, ban insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, from dropping clients who get sick, or from setting lifetime caps.
Not a single Republican voted for the Bill and to their total of 178 "nays" were added 34 Democrat votes.
The Republicans were united in their opposition to legislation they consider "socialist", unaffordable, and, according to House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner, "an historic loss of liberty" and a "betrayal of the clear will of the American people".
A poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup shortly after the Bill's signing did not appear to substantiate this latter assertion, with 49% of respondents supporting the health overhaul and 40% opposing it.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the push for this particular victory has been as divisive as it has been politically exhausting.
With the Republicans vowing to overturn the legislation in future, but for the meantime determinedly bent on destroying Mr Obama, there seems little prospect of the consensus he will require to make progress on other fronts.
Foremost on his agenda now will be banking regulation, jobs, climate change and immigration - and the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
The price of his healthcare win would seem, at this small remove, to be a bitterness that will constrain even modest advancement.
It is possible that the Republicans - as they have shown in the past - will refuse to co-operate out of political spite.
They will also be hoping that opposition to the reforms remains sufficiently pervasive to deliver them reversals in the November mid-term elections, control of Congress, and ultimately the White House in 2012.
With some of the heat out of the healthcare debate, the banking crisis stabilised, and with improvements to the economy on the horizon - and thus jobs and growth - Mr Obama will seek to project himself as a firm leader with the interests of the majority of the American people at heart and an ability to match his noted rhetoric with effective action.
Certainly, this success was not achieved without steely determination and a streetfighter's instincts.
There will have been many house Democrats in marginal seats who effectively signed a resignation statement by supporting the reforms.
Equally, there may be those wavering voters in Republican-held marginals who come round to the view, proclaimed by leading Democrats, that the heathcare overhaul is a moment to match the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.
Whether the electorate as a whole finds such a "call of history" compelling, only time will tell.
The verdict, when it eventually comes, will seal President Obama's future and, most likely, his legacy.
