President Obama triangulated, truncated and equivocated on his way to a pale compromise with lawmakers over the payroll tax. On Saturday, with Senate approval behind him and House action a question mark next week, he professed satisfaction with a result that will benefit 160 million Americans -- for eight weeks in 2012.

"I'm glad that both parties in Congress came together," the president declared. "And I want to thank them for ensuring that as we head into the holidays, folks at home don't have to worry about their taxes going up."

Although the president succeeded in pressuring Republican lawmakers to extend the existing tax break beyond its Jan. 1 expiration date, the victory will be short-lived -- 60 days’ continuance rather than a year. And Obama’s concessions and tactics to win what amounts to a station break during the nation’s acrimony could yet come back to haunt him.

The compromise deal irked some Democrats and environmental allies; belied Obama’s starchy new persona as a give-no-ground bully with Congress; and permitted the opposing party to change the subject from an argument about tax fairness to a distraction over the job-creating merits of a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline -- a last-minute distraction engineered by congressional Republicans as their price for compromise.

To renew the payroll tax through March, the president forfeited his original effort to make it more generous (cutting the 6.2 percent payroll tax in half); tossed aside his arguments that the lost revenues be offset with higher taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans; and abandoned his vow to thwart Republicans from ever making a controversial pipeline project part of a deal. Environmental groups shuddered at how swiftly Obama switched gears to sign off on the provisions dealing with the Keystone XL pipeline -- provisions that just 10 days ago he said he would block.

After weeks of stalemate, the Senate voted, 89-10, Saturday for a $33 billion bill to approve extensions of eight weeks each for a 2 percent reduction in Social Security payroll taxes currently in law, plus unemployment benefits that would have expired in January if Congress had not acted. The legislation also keeps in place existing Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors.

The Senate bill proposes to offset the costs of all the provisions with higher fees on new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Raising the fees would add to the 30-year costs of loans they guarantee, prompting banks to quietly pass the costs to borrowers down the line, critics have suggested.

The Congressional Budget Office said Saturday that the bill, including the mortgage fee offsets, could lower the deficit by nearly $3 billion through 2021.

The Republican-controlled House next week will vote on the package, concluding what has been a rancorous year of partisan bickering and gamesmanship between Capitol Hill and the White House.

The temporary compromise ensures that Washington’s partisan disagreements about how best to help the economy -- and to win elections -- will roar back to life almost immediately. Only a change in economic growth or the employment picture, or perhaps a shift in the political winds for either of the two parties, will amend the script. And that fact is what made a mini-compromise possible.