We'll see. My instant reaction was:
This was not a firm commitment to the Senate bill. It was an opening for more debate; and an invitation to let the GOP to contribute, which, of course, they won't. It just passes the test of resolution I laid out earlier today. But not much more.
Upon reflection, his emphasis on the real human need out there and his insistence on its deficit neutrality seemed to me to be exactly the right emphases for addressing the public. As for Congress? The morale boost might certainly help prod the House – and Obama's constant praise of the House was also code, it seemed to me. Sprung strikes a similar tone:
Could have been worse. He defended the broad outlines of the bill eloquently, and per preview, said he would not walk away and that Congress has to find a way. But he did not say how. There was the gesture/invitation to bipartisanship I anticipated, but it seemed designed merely to put Republicans on the defensive. His prescription pointed toward the House passing the Senate bill without calling for it. Will he now help to drive Democrats that way? Jury's still out.
Pareene gives the most persuasive thumbs-up I think:
Here's the brilliance of the jobs focus: an incoming president's first address to a joint session (his pseudo-SOTU) can be lofty and grand and all that bullshit. And it would've been insane for Obama to have hammered on job creation in that first address, because every economist in the nation knew we were going to shed a zillion jobs over the next year. Obviously the stimulus should've been larger, and a supplemental stimulus should've been passed last year when it became apparent that the one passed was not large enough, but from a purely political standpoint, to announce your job creation plan in the trough of a major recession is just setting yourself up to be blamed when the jobs continue doing what jobs do in a recession. To bring your Presidential focus back around to it now, when the worst is hopefully behind us, is a nice bit of maneuvering.
He actually focused on health care more than we expected him to, and while some were hoping he was going to explicitly say "I call on the House to pass the Senate Bill and I call on the Senate to amend their bill through reconciliation," that is actually the sort of thing he should save for his sessions with congressional leaders. Reminding the public that the bill will regulate the insurers and be deficit-neutral was way more helpful for the cause than explaining his plan to ram it through an unfriendly congress.
The Dish 