If there’s one thing you can say with absolute certainty about Barack Obama as a politician, it is that he learns – and then improvises, adapts and overcomes, as Clint Eastwood rasps in Heartbreak Ridge. There is no better example of his agility than his first budget.

In pushing the stimulus legislation, Obama initially opted to prioritize his campaign promises of “bipartisanship” over some of his promises of progressive policy. The end result was Republican stonewalling and a bill whose substance and public approval was (while still solid) unnecessarily weakened.

From The Campaign for America’s Future