Obama Preaches Patience

President Obama was on television again last night, in his second primetime news conference. How'd it go? The New York Times observes that he was in lecture mode—“an effort, aides said, to lower the temperature after a supercharged week and nudge the country toward what Mr. Obama considers the more pressing issues of fixing the banking system and reviving the economy.” But is this really such a bad thing? The speech may have been boring, but Jon Cohn at The New Republic notes Obama's remarkable consistency: "when it comes to his agenda, he has said the exact same thing every time he's been asked. ... And while that hardly guarantees he'll be a successful executive—sometimes, a little ambiguity and deception come in handy—it does suggest you can feel confident that his public words are indicative of what he actually believes. "