In the meantime, Netanyahu has all but given up on making even marginal progress on the Palestinian question.
Many of Mr Hussein's internal and external enemies share their misgivings.Meanwhile, America seems to be making only marginal progress in the Security Council.
The US, the most armed nation in the history of humankind, the world's hyperpower, which spends more on weapons than the 10 next highest-spending nations combined, that country – along with five European allies and partners from the Gulf states – is pounding Isis from the air and yet making only marginal progress.
"We're not looking to make marginal or incremental progress here," said Melody C. Barnes, the president's domestic policy adviser, who was addressing the annual conference of the Independent Sector, a nonprofit trade association.
If Mr. Dunbar makes only marginal progress, however, history could well remember Mrs. Whitman as the governor who acknowledged the problem of racial profiling, but failed to solve it.
However, China has made only marginal progress toward these rebalancing goals.
Beard's "Women & Power," on the other hand, offers a slightly more optimistic vision — a reflection upon three thousand years of inequity and a modest hope for marginal progress, made through the incremental raising of cultural consciousness.
However, the complexity of the trait allowed only marginal progress.
Labour's shadow foreign secretary and election strategist Douglas Alexander dismissed the criticism, arguing that the party was making good progress in "key battleground marginal seats".
