Who was the big winner in the lame duck session, Barack Obama or Olympia Snowe?

A few of us have been saying lately that recently passed legislation during the lame duck session was more about those affected by it than whether or not it was a "win" for President Obama. For example, the repeal of DADT finally allows gays and lesbians to openly die for their country.

Matt Yglesias explains how the media might have done better to anoint Olympia Snowe as the comeback senator rather than anointing Barack Obama the comeback kid:

The problem here, is that once we waited for the lame duck and wound up accomplishing all the legislative stuff that did in fact have substantial Republican support, all the press suddenly turned into how Obama was a “comeback kid” who was “winning” during the lame duck. Every fear that Bob Corker might have had six months ago about voting on Obama’s side of any bill was essentially vindicated. You could just as easily describe the lame duck session as a huge win for Olympia Snowe. After all, unlike Obama she got her way on START and DADT but also got her way on DREAM and one way to describe the tax cut compromise is really that she got Obama to shift to her position on taxes and got Mitch McConnell to give her cover on her right flank on unemployment insurance and ARRA extensions. But nobody is talking about how Olympia Snowe is the “comeback Senator” who, after 12 months of ineffectual moderation, succeeded in making the world turn on her pivotal status.

And yet congress just isn’t set up to function as a parliamentary body. If the passage of legislation per se is deemed a victory for the president, then it’s necessarily going to become an agonizing process to pass or repeal any kind of laws.