Is Obama a conservative or a progressive realist?

Craig and I go around about this occasionally over at Bring it On!. Craig is a rightwinger and I of course am a leftwing nutjob. I say Obama is centrist, Craig says he is a liberal. Lately three issues have shown that Obama does tend to be more centrist in my humble yet very vocal opinion; The death penalty stand he has taken, the FISA position and his new pronouncement on faith-based funding. Below is a short discussion by Eric Alterman and Pepe Escobar on this exact same issue. The transcript is available here at Real News