As constituents of a congressman well known for his auto dealership, Butler Countians might have recognized a standard sales technique deployed Tuesday night during President Barack Obama’s televised address about Syria.

Obama labored to identify and overcome common objections to his plan to strike the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as punishment for attacking his own people with poison gas.

Obama alleges Syrian government forces carried out a sarin gas attack Aug. 21 in Damascus, killing 1,429 people, among them several hundred children. The Syrian government initially blamed the attack on rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, but it admitted having the weapons earlier Tuesday.

For more than a week, Obama prepared a speech to close the deal for a military strike, but plans changed when Russian President Vladimir Putin, an ally of Assad, proposed a diplomatic solution — Syria would agree to give up its stores of chemical weapons and allow international inspectors to oversee their inventory, collection, confiscation and destruction.

Putin’s offer prompted Obama to ask Congress to delay voting on legislation authorizing military force against Syria, leaving the president with little choice but to focus on the objections to his plan which, frankly speaking, Obama himself offered reluctantly and which appeared to be highly unpopular, according to polls.

Putin’s proposal isn’t detailed yet, and critics predict it will be difficult to implement even without an ongoing bloody civil war. It relies on the Assad regime being honest and forthright in disclosing the locations and quantities of weapons stockpiles cached across a large country. And by relying on the Assad regime, critics add, the deal legitimizes and sustains Assad as leader of the divided nation — it implies Assad is still our man in Syria.

On the other hand, the opening of a diplomatic path defuses, at least temporarily, a headlong call to arms. The U.S. military will maintain its presence in the Mediterranean Sea to keep pressure on Assad “and be ready to respond” if other measures fail, Obama said.

Under rapidly changing circumstances, Obama made the most he could of an opportunity to clarify his objectives regarding Syria. While agreeing with naysayers who insist the United States is not the global police, he did say Americans for more than 70 years have been “an anchor of global security” because it possesses the military might and the democratic heritage needed for that role.

The only thing lacking from Obama was an attempt to close a deal — but only because there was no deal to close. That’s been put on hold, for now at least.