Never thought of Obama this way but after having read this Slate article by David Weigel I looked at the shutdown a bit differently.
He was not posturing. Republicans failed to appreciate the president's strengthened position vis-à-vis 2011, when he had lost the House and needed to win re-election. They had a theory that the world had changed since 1995, and the "optics" of a shutdown were changeable. Republicans didn't realize that Obama was doing his best impression of Rorschach after he gets jailed in Watchmen. He wasn't locked in with them. They were locked in with him. *
*In this analogy, Ted Cruz is the guy that Rorshach splatters with hot fat.
Snicker.