Obama fake-out

Frank Rich suggests in an interesting op-ed piece today that despite the media chatter about the stimulus package and some talking heads already declaring Obama's presidency a total failure, that Obama actually came out of this week one step ahead of the game.

Rich reasons that because the stimulus package doesn't seem like it will be enough to really turn the economy around, Obama can now point back at the compromised stimulus only 3 weeks into his presidency and claim that he took a stab at bi-partisanship and it didn't work when he goes to work setting other parts of his agenda.

I wonder if this strategy actually has any merit? As Rich points out, over the course of the campaign there were a number of times when it seemed like Obama was down and he seemed to turn lemons into lemonade. I guess we will have to wait and see.