It's rare when a president is given an opportunity to reboot in the middle of a term, but that's what the end of the government shutdown has provided President Barack Obama. The question now is: What will he do with it?
The first clues came Thursday morning and produced an ambiguous answer. Speaking for the first time after signing the bill that reopened the federal government, Obama was both conciliatory and challenging, offering outreach to some and a scolding to others.
His calls for bipartisan cooperation were aimed at what he called the "responsible" Republicans who in the end yielded to the obvious — that their party could not allow itself to be blamed for the first U.S. debt default in history as well as the first federal shutdown in 17 years — and voted to reopen the government and extend its borrowing power.