SO the US got to the edge of the fiscal cliff, didn’t like what it saw and moved a few steps back. We should all be relieved it did. If the world’s biggest economy had gone into recession, our own chance of recovery would have disappeared. Given its impact on the UK and the rest of the world, I’m surprised we didn’t see and read more about the deal done on Capitol Hill.

The Americans have avoided disaster – for the moment – but like most compromises the deal has satisfied no one.

Before the New Year, the polls said that two-out-of-three Americans wanted their politicians to broker a deal. Now they have one, only one-in-three is satisfied with it.

And that, as Barack Obama is learning, is politics for you. As they say, it’s better to travel hopefully than arrive.

America’s destination, which entails increased capital and inheritance taxes for the rich, extended tax credits and unemployment benefits for the poor and squeezed middle – yes, the Americans have them too – is a victory for common sense.

Even the wild men on the Republican right must have realised a replay of scenes from the 1930s wouldn’t have played well with an audience that has experienced more affluent times.

But many still see President Obama as a socialist intruder into the Great American Dream while his own supporters are condemning him for weakness and selling out.

The euphoria, the sense of change that greeted his first election seems an age away. If nothing else, austerity focuses us on the here and now.

I’ve always thought that for most of his first term, President Obama stayed in election mode, trying hard to keep his appeal as broad as possible and maybe fudging quite a few difficult decisions.

But, as an earlier president realised, you can’t please all the people all the time. Government is about politics. Like it or not, politics is about doing things that make you unpopular with some people.

The American political system means that this is President Obama’s final term. Like all politicians he will have one eye on his legacy and reputation, but it will allow him to develop as a statesman and a politician. Judging by the grey hairs, the process is well underway.

That will mean more deal doing and more compromises to get his own way. But that is what politics is all about.

Yes, there is space for the grand gesture and the rousing speech. But politics isn’t an academic subject, it is a trade, the main object of which is to get someone to change their opinion so it edges a little closer to your own. Even if the journey is a short one, you would be surprised at how long and how difficult it sometimes is.

The Americans are hero-worshippers and they look on the Lincolns, the Roosevelts and Kennedys as giants who shaped events by sheer force of personality.

They were, of course, flawed human beings who got their way by wheeling and dealing and using the levers of power with ruthless determination. They all spoke the same language – the one universal language of politics.

President Obama is now speaking it, too, and while the zealots on both sides might not like it, it is a very welcome sound to those who rely on politicians to ensure they have a job to go to and a roof over their head. I also suspect his voice will sound even better as it echoes through history.