With the Obama administration under fire for what critics call unrestrained spending and polls showing the American public ambivalent about the impact of the stimulus plan, officials are pushing back, seeking to highlight the role played by their polices in fueling a recovery.This is good news that the administration is finally defending the stimulus package. But unless we get some answers as to why this wasn't done earlier, we risk the White House making the same mistake in the future, and losing control of the message on issue after issue, like we're now seeing with health care. It's time we were told who is advising the president on these matters. Who didn't think it was important to defend the stimulus package until now, seven months after it was passed, when the Republicans were berating it from day one? Lots of us have been begging the White House for months to defend themselves on this issue, and they didn't. And now the public has turned against them.
It's the same story over and over again. President Obama sits back, gets pummeled for months, does nothing, then when the damage becomes too great, and possibly irreversible, he suddenly wakes up and decides to fight back. The presidency is not a high school book report. And pulling last minute all-nighters, regardless of how effective they were during the campaign, is not a long-term strategy for success. But what's truly galling is how obvious all of this is to everyone outside this White House.
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