Financial Times (UK) - Obama gains bulletproof credentials.

Not only did Mr Obama authorise the operation, US officials say he shepherded it through an intense series of meetings over the past month with his national security advisers and overruled the less risky option of simply bombing the compound in Pakistan. Mr Obama wanted definitive proof that the person they had targeted was bin Laden himself.

“You should not underestimate how personally the president has been involved in this issue,” a senior administration official told the Financial Times.

The successful operation has the potential to turn around a presidency that, on top of chronic economic problems, remains dogged by claims that Mr Obama is unwilling to lead and take risks even when it is in the national interest. It will also cement the president’s reputation for making decisions in a calm and methodical manner under pressure, embodied in his nickname of “no-drama Obama”.

Republicans have been quick to point out the intelligence that led the US to bin Laden came from al-Qaeda detainees almost certainly held in Guantánamo Bay – a facility Mr Obama has long wanted to close.

But the president’s opponents cannot take away from him the fact that bin Laden was caught on his watch.

Instead of being labelled another Jimmy Carter, whose fate was sealed when he authorised an ill-fated military raid to free the US diplomatic hostages in Iran in 1979, Mr Obama has bulletproof national security credentials of his own.