The Hour Long Press Conference

The President just concluded his first prime-time press conference since taking office, and it's a startling contrast to the pressers of the past 8 years. It was clear, thoughtful, honest, articulate...just great overall. It was also very, very long. He spent 57 minutes on the air, during prime time. I bet the networks were thrilled. But it was as close to a home run of a sales pitch as one could hope for. If any American watching tonight was undecided about the stimulus or confused about the economic situation, the Professor-President went to great lengths to change that.

His answer below is the argument that the filter of the news media has prevented from being fully articulated, and it's a compelling argument for not just the stimulus, but other crucial goals of this administration:

This is another concern that I've had in some of the arguments that I'm hearing. When people suggest that what a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy-efficient -- why would that be a waste of money? We're creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings or weatherizing 2 million Americans' homes, as was called for in the package. So that right there creates economic stimulus, and we are saving taxpayers, when it comes to federal buildings, potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets. And we're reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn't we want to make that kind of investment?

The same applies when it comes to information technologies and health care. We know that health care is crippling businesses and making us less competitive, as well as breaking the banks of families all across America. And part of the reason is we've got the most inefficient health care system imaginable. We're still using paper. We're -- we're still filing things in triplicate. Nurses can't read the prescriptions that doctors -- that doctors have written out. Why wouldn't we want to put that on an -- put that on an electronic medical record that will reduce error rates, reduce our long-term cost of health care, and create jobs right now?

Education, yet another example. The suggestion is, why should the federal government be involved in school construction? Well, I visited a school down in South Carolina that was built in the 1850s. Kids are still learning in that school -- as best they can. When the -- when the railroad -- when the -- it's right next to a railroad, and when the train runs by the whole building shakes and the teacher has to stop teaching for a while. The -- the auditorium is completely broken down and they can't use it. So why wouldn't we want to build state-of-the-art schools with science labs that are teaching our kids the skills they need for the 21st century, that will enhance our economy and, by the way, right now will create jobs?

And this answer was possibly the clearest explanation I have heard from anyone as to how we ended up in the financial mess we're in today. I imagine a lot of Americans watching tonight had an "a-ha!" moment as this particular professor - the President - just had a breakthrough with his students:

Well, first of all, I don't think it's accurate to say that consumer spending got us into this mess. What got us into this mess initially were banks taking exorbitant, wild risks with other people's monies, based on shaky assets. And because of the enormous leverage, where they had $1 worth of assets and they were betting $30 on that $1, what we had was a crisis in the financial system.

That led to a contraction of credit, which in turn meant businesses couldn't make payroll or make inventories, which meant that everybody became uncertain about the future of the economy.

So people started making decisions accordingly, reducing investments, initiating layoffs, which in turn made things worse.

More tomorrow...