The fact that Obama did his first press conference in Prime Time goes along with what he did on the campaign in terms of trying to get a message out. Go big, or don't go at all. So how did he do? His opening remarks where strong, sober, and forceful. The questions right from the start where not worded that great. This was not a banner night for the press corps. Either way, Obama usually veered towards talking points when answering a question instead of answering them completely directly which is something all politicians do. He was not as strong when talking about Iran in the second question, but he did say that he wanted to have talks with them and struck a much more respectful tone. Stuff like that will piss conservatives off, but they lost so we got to see if a different approach works. That was a major part of the theme of the night for Obama; he pretty much stated over and over again that the other guys lost, and this bill is the type of thing the American people elected me to do. In the end it is kinda a George Costanza theory of governance. If what the last administration's policies did not work, then do the opposite. This is no guarantee that what Obama wants to do will work as well as George's opposite theory, but we will see. If I had to guess, I think this stimulus will pass, it will lessen some of the current economic hardships but not eliminate most of them, but eventually the economic cycles will turn in the next few years and we will see an upturn in the economy. I have already rambled a lot in this post, so forgive me for rambling more. I am not an economist, but I do believe that economies are inherently tied to national psychology. That is part of the reason that Obama kept pointing out that this happened on the other guys watch. Some will say he was being needlessly partisan but is served a psychological marketing purpose in terms of reminded the public which "brand" caused the problems because if Obama lets his "brand" be associated with causing the problem it will make it twice as hard for him to fix it because the psychology of the country will be bad. For the record, I fully admit that the last few sentences where not exactly hard core economic analysis, but sometimes one has to look at other indicators to figure out what is going on in country besides cold hard numbers. That is why Obama ended his press conferences by mentioning he was an internal optimism; sometimes a positive outlook goes a long way on the micro and macro level. K. I will stop by babbling now.