President Obama had several interviews yesterday. This bit is from his interview on ABC News. He’s talking with Charlie Gibson about the stimulus bill.

…The criticisms have generally been around some policy initiatives that were placed in the bill that I think are actually good policy, but some people may say is not going to actually stimulate jobs quickly enough. I think that there’s legitimate room for working through those issues over the next several weeks to make sure that we get the best possible bill. But here’s the thing that I think we have to understand. The economy is in desperate straits. What I won’t do is adopt the same economic theories that helped land us in the worst economy since the Great Depression. What I will do is work with anybody of good faith to make sure that we can come up with the best possible package to not only create jobs and provide support to families, but also to lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth….

Emphasis added. Here’s another bit.

Well, I think what Speaker Pelosi also said was that she wanted to sit down with them and talk to them and, in fact, included some of their ideas in the package. I mean, keep in mind, when I first released the framework for our plan, we were complimented by the Republicans for the fact that about $300 billion of the package was in the form of tax cuts. I was criticized by members of my own party.

Now, that hasn’t changed much. The only thing that’s changed is the politics of it. And I’m less concerned about bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. I’m interested in solving the problem for the American people as quickly as possible. And I think that we have an obligation to make sure this money is spent wisely. I want this thing to move through the Senate. I want the House and the Senate bills to be reconciled….

It’s good that he is reality-based. But the Administration has made some definite errors in rolling out this stimulus bill. For one thing, they gave the Republicans far too much, far too fast, and didn’t play enough hardball in negotiating various provisions. And while I agree with most of the longer-term provisions in the bill, they might have played out better if brought up separately.

But primarily they let the Republicans get far too much attention for their whining in the early news cycles around this bill. Think Progress has documented twice as many Republicans in the media in the days immediately after the bill was introduced. The Democrats should never have let that happen, and I hope they’ll do better in the future with defining the contours of the discussion as it unfolds.