As you may have heard, Barack Obama is coming to town Tuesday, apparently in order to take his case for the $787 billion stimulus package to the Colorado branch of the, uh, American people.

That is, of course, what presidents traditionally do. But, if memory serves, they often do it before the big vote.

And yet, Obama arrives Tuesday, and the big vote took place Friday. As I write this, the House has voted in favor of the bill, and the Senate was waiting for Sen. Sherrod Brown to fly back to town from his mother's memorial to cast the 60th vote.

This should count as a huge, groundbreaking win for Obama. He fought off the liberal wing of his party, which thought the package was too small, and he beat back the Republicans who said it was too large. But if it was, indeed, a huge, groundbreaking victory, Obama wouldn't be coming here to rally Coloradans to the benefits of green-energy jobs, as if anyone here needed convincing of the benefits of green-energy jobs.

No, if total victory were in hand, Obama would be back home at the White House, making lunch for the kids, although not, I'm guessing, PB&J sandwiches.

Obama is coming to Denver, and later that day on to Phoenix, because less than a month into office, he needs a do-over. He doesn't need a re-count - remember, he got all the votes he needed to pass the stimulus package - but rather a recalibration.

He has to set new terms for what counts as victory. Because Obama ran for president as the person who would make over Washington - moving it from the Clinton-Bush era culture wars into a time of an Obama-led truce - he had no choice but to present the stimulus package as one that everyone could and should embrace. And by everyone, he apparently meant Republicans.

He wined them; he dined them. He even offered cookies. He came to their houses. He invited them to his house. Look, he even had dinner with George Will.

But, along the way, Republicans figured something out: They may not have the votes to win anything, but what they do have is the power not to add to Obama's majority. So, they said no, in large numbers and applauded themselves for their unanimity, calling it principle. It's an all-purpose word. When Republican senator Judd Gregg backed out of Obama's Cabinet, Republicans applauded him for standing up for principle - in Gregg's case, the principle apparently being that it's OK not to keep your word.

And so, even as the bill passes, the story becomes that Obama's view of bipartisanship must have been either naive or unrealistic or both.

It was almost too easy. Obama didn't simply lose control of the message. He also lost control of the scorekeeper. Victory has a thousand fathers, as the saying goes, and defeat is an orphan. But Republicans adopted defeat as one of their own - and renamed it victory. If nothing else, you've got to give them credit for creativity.

I don't know if this is all politics. Certainly, the Republican stance is at least in part ideological. Republicans, in the modern era, do apparently believe that tax cuts are the answer to virtually any question - even the big ones, like what exactly was Joaquin Phoenix doing on Letterman the other night? And it's true Republicans do routinely oppose all budget-busting spending bills, or at least those proposed by Democrats.

But a vote against the stimulus bill - which John McCain ( remember John McCain?) called generational theft - was a complete and absolute freebie.

If every House Republican (and seven Democrats) voted against it, it was going to pass anyway. If every Senate Republican who didn't live in either Maine or Pennsylvania voted against it, it was going to pass anyway.

If, as most economists believe, a package like this one had to be passed for the economy to have a chance to recover, Republicans didn't cost the country anything by voting against it. The question that remains is how much they cost themselves.

And that's why Obama is Colorado- bound. He won't be here looking for votes. He's looking for approval, by which I mean that Obama, the big sports fan, is looking to play the referees. You see, Obama still believes in change. He wants to change how you score the game, so that an "aye" vote counts for more than just saying no.