which I didn't see, being at a meeting in my town. But reading the transcript:

1. I'm glad, glad, glad that asshole Bush isn't President any more (assuming, for the sake of the argument, that he was ever legitimately elected in the first place).

2. If that little scut Favreau wrote the speech, he did a good job. None of the anaphora, none of the soaring rhetoric, and a sober sense that, who knew, people might really be hurting. [Lesson learned: Pushback works, if only little by little.]

3. Interestingly, the word "bipartisan" doesn't appear in the speech -- although it's tagged that way in the version I read, at the Times.

Missing:

4. Who's accountable? Why are we in the situation we're in? The closest I've heard him come is "theories," which is certainly an advance, in that it attacks the Conservatives, but is there any recognition that actual people made policy decisions or business that had the effect that they did? If restoring trust in the markets is key, then isn't it essential to expose and weed out the untrustworthy?

5. Where's the money? Two trillion to Hank Paulson's golfing buddies and we don't know where it went or what was done with it. That's the elephant in the policy room, and it's a mighty big elephant.

Presser Q&A:

5. Back to accountability, Obama on TARP:

It means that we correct some of the mistakes with TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] that were made earlier, the lack of consistency, the lack of clarity, in terms of how the program was going to move forward.

Well, where were you when the bill was written, for pity's sake? The lack of clarity and transparency happened because of legislation the Democrats wrote and passed, and that you whipped for.

6. The bottom line on the economy:

My bottom line is to make sure that we are saving or creating 4 million jobs, we are making sure that the financial system is working again, that homeowners are getting some relief.

Then you need to support HOLC for the homeowners, and single payer both for the workers, and to get the employers out of the insurance business. (Hey, we might even make Detroit competitive with Canada!) And I'd also like to see "working" defined a little bit better for the financial industry. Why not turn the banks into regulated public utilities?

7. On Iran, good!

And my expectation is, in the coming months, we will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table, face-to-face diplomatic overtures, that will allow us to move our policy in a new direction.

8. A critique of Republican language. Good!

But what I've -- what I've been concerned about is some of the language that's been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth.

First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now. ...

But when they start characterizing this as pork, without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package -- something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years -- then you get a feeling that maybe we're playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.

And, incidentially, the "no earmarks" is a shout out to Pelosi, for those who can hear it.

9. The banksters and TARP Now we get some accountability:

What got us into this mess initially were banks taking exorbitant, wild risks with other people's monies based on shaky assets and because of the enormous leverage, where they had $1 worth of assets and they were betting $30 on that $1, what we had was a crisis in the financial system.

Double-edged sword, though. Why wasn't that obvious back when TARP was passed, and if it was obvious, then why was TARP passed so that it could be turned into a totally opaque giveaway?

And again:

We averted catastrophe by passing the TARP legislation. But, as I said before, because of a lack of clarity and consistency in how it was applied, a lack of oversight in -- in how the money went out, we didn't get as big of a bang for the buck as we should have.

On averted catastrophe: No evidence on offer. Nor is it clear that averting catastrophe and passing TARP as drafted are the same thing. Notice, as so often in this story, the lack of agency in the language: "how it was applied..." Well, who applied it? "how the money went out" Well, who sent it out, and where did it go? And so forth. Beyond questions of policy, that language gives me no confidence at all that Obama's got a grip on the financial crisis from a systemic standpoint. Especially since Geither and Summers are part of the financial class that created the crisis to begin with. Can't we get some DFHs in there? You know, because they were right, when everbody in power now was wrong, and in many cases personally profited from the disaster?

10. Say HOLC! Say it! Say it!

We are going to have to work with the banks in an effective way to clean up their balance sheets so that some trust is restored within the marketplace, because right now part of the problem is that nobody really knows what's on the bank's books. Any given bank, they're not sure what kinds of losses are there. We've got to open things up and restore some trust.

We also have to deal with the housing issue in a clear and consistent way.

The banks balance sheets and the housing issue are two sides of the same coin, since the banks are the lenders, and the homeowners are the debtors. To clean up the housing issue is to clean up the banks balance sheets, modulo the creators of toxic derivatives, who should fail and be punished, hopefully with jail time, as part of creative destruction. And the way to clean up both crises, contra Lord Eschaton, is not by onesies and twosies in bankruptcy court, but as Nouriel Roubini suggests, by a twenty-first century Homeowners Loan Corporation, which has two great merits: It's been proven to work under FDR, and it actually returned a profit to the government by the end of its program life.

12. Calling Doctor Freud?

One of my bottom lines is whether or not credit is flowing to the people who need it. Is it flowing to banks -- excuse me. Is it flowing to businesses, large and small? Is it flowing to consumers? Are they able to operate in ways that translate into jobs and economic growth on Main Street?

13. Utter crap on Leahy's proposal for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

So I will take a look at Sen. Leahy's proposal, but my general orientation is to say let's get it right moving forward.

Yeah, why can't you get over it?

14. Even utterer crap on entitlements:

Having said that, I think there are a lot of Republicans who are sincere in recognizing that, unless we deal with entitlements in a serious way, the problems we have with this year's deficit and next year's deficit pale in comparison to what we're going to be seeing 10 or 15 years or 20 years down the road.

Good to know that Big Money isn't entitled to two trillion dollars of our money with no transparency and no accountability. Oh, wait. Those aren't the kind of entitlements he's talking about?

* * *

Well, I'm not going to let Bush throw the curve off; so just because Bush would get an F doesn't mean that Obama gets an A.

I was going to give Obama a B- because, Jeebus, at least he's doing the homework and thinking, for pity's sake. He's not insane!

But the pure Village slop on the Truth and Reconcilation Act -- which should be hailed as an act of courage, not denigrated as backward looking -- and reinforcing The Big Wienie on the coming theft of Social Security force me to knock him down to slightly better than average. And I find the general lack of willingness to hold people and institutions accountable, both in the language and the policy choices, disturbing. It's what Versailles wants, and it's in every line of this presser.

Could do better!