President Obama holds first primetime news conference at the White House

A few minutes ago, Barack Obama wrapped up his first primetime press conference as President in the East Room of the White House.

The President began by speaking for a few minutes about his trip today to Elkhart, Indiana (where he held an economic security town hall) and then about the status of the stimulus package that is before Congress.

(The Senate voted to end debate earlier today, 61-36, and move to a vote on final passage. Absent from the Senate was one John Cornyn, who was in New York speaking at a right wing media and business conclave called the Monday Meeting).

The President then took thirteen questions from major television networks, newspapers, and... The Huffington Post.

I watched almost the whole thing and came away thinking, after eight years of Bush, that was a bit surreal. It's so refreshing to have a leader who provides substantive answers to challenging questions. It's important for Americans to be able to see their President thinking, and I believe that's what we saw tonight. Someone who is calm, composed, and in command, working diligently to solve our nation's problems as quickly as possible. Someone who takes the time to pause while giving an answer and chooses words carefully.

During his address and response to questions, the President ably dismantled several arguments that Republicans have been using to attack the stimulus.

Like the argument that the stimulus should only consist of tax cuts:

[A]s we've learned very clearly and conclusively over the last eight years, tax cuts alone can't solve all of our economic problems - especially tax cuts that are targeted to the wealthiest few Americans.

We have tried that strategy, time and time again. And it's only helped lead us to the crisis we face right now.

And that's why we have come together, around a plan that combines hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the middle class with direct investment in areas like health care, energy, education and infrastructure, investments that will save jobs, create new jobs and new businesses and help our economy grow again, now and in the future.

Or the argument that government has no role to play in revitalizing the economy:

[T]the question I think that the American people are asking is, do you just want government to do nothing, or do you want it to do something? If you want it to do something, then we can have a conversation. But doing nothing - that's not an option from my perspective.

Or the argument that the public works and infrastructure rebuilding projects in the stimulus are "wasteful spending":

When people suggest that what a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy-efficient - why would that be a waste of money? We're creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings or weatherizing 2 million Americans' homes, as was called for in the package. So that right there creates economic stimulus, and we are saving taxpayers, when it comes to federal buildings, potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets. And we're reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn't we want to make that kind of investment?

Meanwhile, it's still Amateur Hour over at the Republican National Committee, where Michael Steele is now on the record as having said a government job is not a job.

Michael Steele: You've got to look at what's going to create sustainable jobs. What this administration is talking about is making work. It is creating work.

ABC's George Stephanopoulous: But that's a job.

Michael Steele: No, it's not a job. A job is something that - that a business owner creates. It's going to be long term. What he's creating...

ABC's George Stephanopoulous: So a job doesn't count if it's a government job?

As usual, Steele and the Republicans have it backwards.

The public sector is actually responsible, ultimately, for all job creation - because no business can succeed and thrive without the resources and services that our tax dollars provide. Think about it.

How could businesses enforce agreements and contracts without the nine tenths of the courts that handle corporate law? They couldn't.

How could businesses distribute goods without the interstate highway system, our public airports, and public seaports? They couldn't.

How could businesses find skilled employees without our public schools system, which educates and trains the workers of tomorrow? They couldn't.

And how could businesses use computers to communicate and complete transactions without the Internet? They couldn't.

Quite simply, our common wealth is the very foundation that supports American businesses and the American economy.

President Obama gets this. That's why his first major priority as president is to get a recovery plan through Congress that will create new jobs and save existing jobs from disappearing. Obama has already said he is not interested in rehashing old debates, and he made a point of emphasizing that again tonight:

Some of the criticisms really are with the basic idea that government should intervene at all in this moment of crisis. You have some people, very sincere, who philosophically just think the government has no business interfering in the marketplace.

And in fact there are several who have suggested that FDR was wrong to intervene back in the New Deal. They're fighting battles that I thought were resolved a pretty long time ago.

Unfortunately, the Beltway media seems obsessed with talking about political theater rather than fostering a meaningful dialogue about the stimulus bill. That's a big part of why the President went to Indiana today to hold a town hall. As Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod told NBC's Rachel Maddow tonight, "We wanted to take the folks in the news media on a field trip."

They sure needed one. And this country still needs Congress to send the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the President's desk.