When I first read about the comment at Politico, it didn’t sound like Obama; it sounded more like “I’m the Decider” …

President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning — but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

My reaction was very similar to James Joyner‘s:

[Obama] was elected president, not king — or even prime minister. He’s easily the most powerful figure in American politics but he’s just the head of one branch of government.

He doesn’t need [Rep. Eric] Cantor’s help very much and is unlikely to get it. The House operates very much along party lines and Cantor is a fiscal conservative who’s not going to get sweet talked into a giant boondoggle whose main purpose is to “do something.” But, given that [Obama] desperately wants broad support for his stimulus package so as to spread the blame if things don’t go well, he’ll need to compromise and give Republicans some concessions.

But the exchange (and hence my reaction to it) took on an entirely different hue when I read this account from the NYT as reprinted in our local newspaper:

“We just have a difference here, and I’m president,” Mr. Obama said to Mr. Cantor, according to Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, who was at the meeting.

Mr. Emanuel said that Mr. Obama was being lighthearted and that lawmakers of both parties had laughed.

Mr. Cantor, in an interview later, had a similar recollection. He said the president had told him, “You’re correct, there’s a philosophical difference, but I won, so we’re going to prevail on that.”

“He was very straightforward,” Cantor added. “There was no disrespect, but it was very matter-of-fact.”

Yet more evidence, I suppose, that we can’t really know what’s going on unless we’re there and should thus remember to take second-hand reports with a grain of salt.