They're now calling him "Bottler Brown". But although the damage in the public eye to British prime minister Gordon Brown's reputation will be to his image of decisiveness, in truth it was not the decision to pull out of an immediate election that reflects poorly on him. Rather it was the fact that he allowed his "agonising" about the possibility of a poll to become public two years before the end of a parliamentary term.
Mr Brown had let it be known that he wanted a personal mandate and that he was capable of dealing an early killing blow to a resurgent Tory party. The polls were smiling on him, it was said. Indeed many political commentators still believe that even with a bounce against him from the Tory conference, he could still have won a substantial majority in a November poll. Whether it could have been a majority to dwarf Tony Blair's is certainly in doubt, however, and in the last few days polling in key marginals and the bleating of vulnerable backbenchers suggested otherwise.
He confirmed yesterday that he had considered a snap election but said he wanted "more time to set out my vision for the future of the country". Political expediency had never been on his mind, he has pleaded most implausibly. Yet, perhaps most damaging to Mr Brown, certainly more damaging than the suggestion he was afraid to face the electorate, will be the impression of scheming, cynicism, and public relations spin that so tainted the Blair years and which the austere, driven, son of the manse, Mr Brown has hoped to shake off.
It appears that part of the strategy of dangling the prospect of an imminent election in front of the often fractious Labour conference was to bring a degree of unity of purpose to the party. He achieved this goal but also succeeded in infusing the Tories with a similar purpose. Gone are the rumblings about David Cameron's grammar schools U-turn or the right-wing mutterings about his repositioning of the party in a greener middle ground. All Cameron needed was a policy coup de theatre, provided brilliantly by shadow chancellor George Osbourne with a cleverly pitched inheritance tax promise for middle England.
In the end, moreover, Mr Brown has seriously narrowed his own options. He hinted yesterday that an election before 2009 is now unlikely. But he will come under increasing pressure to make that an explicit commitment. The alternative will be to lay the basis for the sort of irresistible frenzy of speculation from the spring of next year that he himself fed to displace Mr Blair and which he knows only too well can acquire a terrible momentum of its own.
Not least of his problems will be the reality that his every action will be analysed in a pre-election context. Yet, while these have not been a happy couple of months for Downing Street's incumbent, they have not by any means been fatal. Mr Brown has plenty of time to steady the boat and demonstrate a finer sense of surefootedness.