Such assumptions are rising in political edges according to analysts and many  of the  President Barack Obama’s Republican adversaries who begrudged him key victories in late this year including a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia and repeal of a ban on openly gay troops.

President Obama’s congressional achievements become in danger when the  unemployment issue suddenly rose more than the 10 percent mark and the upstart ultra conservative Tea Party movement galvanized American voters frustrated over the economy and Washington.

According to a White House statement, the two presidents spoke by phone on the first day of Obama’s Hawaiian holiday after Congress adjourned Wednesday in a flurry of legislative action, including the Senate vote to pass the treaty.

That carried over into mounting disaffection for Obama, whose party suffered a thrashing at the mid-term elections on November 2.

Several senators were reassured by the last-minute passage of an amendment stating that the accord should not be interpreted in a way that would hamper U.S. missile defense plans. The amendment was sponsored by Republican senators John McCain of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, among others.

And yet despite that defeat, the Democrats, who in January pass control of the House to Republicans while keeping a diminished majority in the Senate, rallied in the eight-week lame duck session that marks the period before a shift in congressional power.

Within a few weeks, Congress managed to extend temporary Bush-era tax cuts, end the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” rule to allow gays to serve openly in the military for the first time and, on the final day of the session, ratify the new START nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia.

Obama was beaming on Wednesday, highlighting his own persistence — “If I believe in something strongly, I stay on it” — and the bipartisan compromise that allowed the laws to squeeze through.

“I think it’s fair to say that this has been the most productive post-election period we’ve had in decades,” Obama said.

Even some political adversaries were impressed. Senator Lindsey Graham said his fellow Republicans “capitulated” to Democratic pressure, but in the end the lawmaker took his hat off to Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

“When people say President Obama had a great two weeks, they’re absolutely right,” Graham told Fox News Radio.

Others said they had been assured of an administration commitment to modernize America’s aging nuclear arsenal.

“The people of the world are watching us, because they rely on our leadership,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Massachusetts. It is time to “move the world a little more out of the dark shadow of nuclear nightmare.”

“We are the leading nuclear power on this earth. It is our responsibility to lead,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota. This treaty is “a step in the right direction.”

Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, called it a step forward in terms of constraining “expensive arms competition with Russia” and frustrating “rogue nations who would prefer as much distance as possible between the United States and Russia.”

Not all Republicans were convinced of the treaty’s merits, however.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, argued on the Senate floor that the basic premise of the treaty — that America’s nuclear arsenal should be at parity with Russia’s — is flawed.

“Russia is a protector of none and a threat to many. America is a protector of many and a threat to none,” DeMint said.

Obama said he wanted to “create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what’s happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians”.

So far, so blah – President George W. Bush often expressed much the same sentiments.

But then, as is his habit , Obama turned the concept around. “Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

Obama said in Turkey that Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation”. John McCain was criticised in 2007 for saying the US was “a Christian nation”, later amending this to “a Judeo-Christian valued nation”.

Of course, the concept of separation of church and state, which derived from the First Amendment to the Constitution, means that the US is not officially a Christian nation or a nation of any other particular religion. Which means, I suppose, that the US is as much a Muslim nation as a Christian one.

It’s a bold – some might say audacious – turnaround by the president.

It’s also a classically Obamaesque move.

During the 2008 campaign, he skillfully made himself, through his life story, the personification of change.

Now, implicitly contrasting himself with the born-again, evangelical Bush who pursued a post-9/11 “crusade” against terrorism, Obama is presenting himself to the Islamic world as the personification of a new, tolerant – and, yes, partly Muslim – America.

UPDATE: The excellent Don Surber crunches the numbers and points out that Obama’s claim is highly dubious. According to Surber, the US has an estimated three to eight million Muslims, less than one per cent of the world’s total and less than at least 23 other countries.

The average claim for the US Muslim population is about six million. The precise figure is difficult to get because it’s not included in US census data and many put the figure at much, much less.

But even if we assume there are six million Muslims in the US, that makes it only the 34th biggest Muslim country in the world – behind Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, China, Ethiopia, Algeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Tanzania, Syria, Malaysia, Niger, Senegal, Ghana, Tunisia, Somalia, Guinea, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso and Tajikistan.

Debbie Schlussel cites a reputable survey by Pew that puts the number of Muslims in the US at 1.8 million. This would make it the 48th biggest Muslim country, after the above list plus France, Libya, Jordan, Israel, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Germany, Kuwait, Oman, Eritrea, Lebanon and Serbia and Montenegro – and just above Britain, which would be the 50th.

This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.

Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history.