Learning from your mistakes

Throughout the spectacular failure of the Stimulus bill negotiations, my main hope had been that after this experience, the Obama team would learn from it's mistakes, and change their tactics.

Well, during last night's press conference Obama basically stated that it would be the case:

Now, just in terms of the historic record here, the Republicans were brought in early and were consulted. And you'll remember that when we initially introduced our framework, they were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cuts that were presented in that framework. Those tax cuts are still in there. I mean, I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of them. And maybe that's the lesson I learned.

Exactly what I wanted to hear.

And if Barack really knows what's good for him, before the next bill he'll brush up on the Thomas Friedman School of Negotiations.