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-White House photo by Pete Souza-

Let’s get one thing straight: It’s unlikely that Obama’s stimulus bill will not pass; even though centrist Democrats and Republicans are balking at at the size of the $900 billion bill, there’s general consensus that they’ll be on board for the final vote. But passing the bill doesn’t mean Obama wins. In fact, it’s the opposite. Most importantly, he lost control over how the public perceives the stimulus package. An angry public now thinks – mistakenly in many cases – the bill is stuffed with pork spending and government waste. This is the first time the Obama team has ever lost control of the message to this degree.

One reason for that shift in public perception is that Obama has allowed Republicans to take over the debate. His attempts at bipartisan collaboration have backfired and the president is left trying to make conciliatory gestures on both sides of the aisle, none of which are helping to contradict the perception that he’s lost control. This week Obama hit the media circuit trying to shift public option. First he had to address the fact that the three of his potential nominees had tax problems, a major public relations gaff in and of itself. But underlying every conversation was the stimulus bill.

“I think that all of these were honest mistakes,” he said on ABC, referring to the nominees who failed to reveal their tax problems, “but ultimately there’s no excuse for them. [...] As I said, I think everybody makes mistakes. And I think I’ve been very clear of the fact that this was a bad mistake. I don’t think it was purposeful, but I think it was a mistake.

“We’re going to have some glitches, and I understand that that’s what people are going to focus on. And I’m focused on it because I don’t want glitches. We can’t afford glitches because, right now, what I should be spending time talking to you about is how we’re going to put three to four million people back to work. And so this is a self-induced injury that I’m angry about, and we’re going to make sure we get it fixed.”

You’d be hard pressed to find another president who has humbled himself to that degree. But is this really going to be enough? Next week you’re going to see his administration return to a well-proven campaign strategy: going state to state, showing politicians and the public who, when and how they’ll benefit from the stimulus bill. That effort will more than likely help ensure its passage. But as I wrote in the last Eatable Politics, the battles he lost over the last week are going to cost him a lot of political capital in the coming months.

-White House photo by Pete Souza-

Pick a medium and chances are Barack Obama was on it or in it last week: cable television, radio, YouTube, newspapers. The soon-to-be Commander-in-Chief is playing the role of Salesman-in-Chief, hyping, explaining and pitching his economic stimulus package to a public who will certainly find the final price tag a little terrifying. Obama is intentionally following the footstep of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who played a similar public role as he sold a stimulus package to a nation in the depths of the Depression. As serious as Obama’s plan is for the present economy, it’s even more crucial for him. If he gets what he’s asking for from Congress, he’ll have the political capital to do almost whatever he wants for the next 8 years. But if he fails, he could have some serious problems living up to all of his promises of change.

On paper, Obama’s stimulus package — which has its share of strong and weak points — looks pretty viable. The key idea is that it pumps new money — not existing money from tax breaks — onto the economy. (Although there will probably be some tax cuts included to appease Republicans.) As part of a piece I wrote on Oregon’s stimulus efforts for this month’s magazine, I interviewed an economics professor at the University of Oregon who put it this way: You can’t shift money from one part of the economy to another and create growth. “On the federal level they can run a deficit and borrow money against the future. On the state level you can’t do that,” he says. “The federal government can do effective short-term stimulus.”

You’re going to hear Obama talk about that principle again and again and again in the coming weeks. “Mr. Obama’s aides said that for the next three weeks, he would pack his schedule with interviews, speeches, news conferences and limited travel to try to rally public support behind the effort. The overall political goal, aides said, was to ensure that Mr. Obama’s economic recovery program was approved quickly by a substantial bipartisan vote in Congress, while at the same time playing down public hopes about how quickly it might work,” wrote Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times.

But what’s missing from the discussion right now? Wiretapping. Torture. Even health care, which has an estimated $650 negative impact on the economy each year. Right now, Obama’s holding off from making any big pronouncements. From The NYT: “In the clearest indication so far of his thinking on the issue, Mr. Obama said on the ABC News program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” that there should be prosecutions if “somebody has blatantly broken the law” but that his legal team was still evaluating interrogation and detention issues and would examine “past practices.”

If he ends up looking like a hero with his stimulus plan, I’m sure we’ll hear how he’ll fix those problems. But if not, it’s anyone’s guess.

“Everybody’s going to have to give,” Obama said on This Week when talking about the stimulus plan. “Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game.”

Obama, perhaps, more than anyone else.