I don't mean to take anything at all away from Obama pushing COGS, as opposed to the old Constellation strategy. That was an incredible, bold move.
Besides SLS, though, it didn't move meaningful industry outside of LEO. It was an important step, but didn't fundamentally move us past the post-Apollo Space Shuttle funk. The Asteroid program was potentially interesting for getting mining going, but small in scale, with long timelines.
Artemis is the first time NASA has run on aggressive, tight timelines since Apollo. They're shooting for achievable, inspiring objectives -- quickly. And this time, we'll have THREE architectures that can get any American or American ally to the surface of the moon for a price.
Gateway guarantees long-term government spend in Lunar orbit, just like the ISS guaranteed long-term government spend in Earth orbit. Artemis aligns government spend towards the industrialization and militarization of space, on terms beneficial to the US.