A week after signing the $787 billion economic stimulus package into law, he repeated his promise to cut the federal deficit in half "by the end of my first term."
Economists and many policy analysts generally agree with his two-track approach, arguing that the stimulus measures will add relatively little to the nation's long-term debt. But getting Washington to make needed fiscal fixes will be an enormous undertaking that will involve overhauling huge benefit programs that have proved resistant to change.
Bill Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar, called the speech "a very important moment for Obama's presidency."
By laying out priorities, it "set the tone not just for a year but for a substantial portion of a presidency," Galston said.
Obama predicted brighter days ahead, signaling a shift from sober talk about the economy to more upbeat language.
"While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild. We will recover and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," he said.
Those words, in contrast to his gloomy pronouncements in recent weeks and months, appeared to answer former President Bill Clinton's tacit criticism in a televised interview, in which he said that he wished Obama would express confidence that "we are going to get out of this and he feels good about the long run."
"Hope is found in unlikely places," Obama said last night. The only excerpt from his speech released by the White House before the evening newscasts was one designed to reassure viewers that things would get better.
That seemed to reinforce an impression that Obama was merely responding to Clinton's criticism and "falling prey to answering every political complaint, as opposed to just getting the policy right," said a former Clinton aide who requested anonymity to avoid cutting lines of communication with the new administration.
Then again, peddling hope, as Obama used to jokingly describe what he did, helped make him president in the first place.
