And since Sarabeth will have her little moment of triumph too, yesterday evening also brought us this. In the President’s own words, uttered directly to the American people, pretty much, in his prime-time press conference:

And you’ll remember that when we initially introduced our framework, they were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cuts that were presented in that framework. Those tax cuts are still in there. I mean, I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of them. And maybe that’s the lesson I learned.

It sounds very much like what I posited yesterday afternoon, doesn’t it: “… the $300 billion worth of tax cuts were stuck in there because Obama really wanted them in the bill, in and of himself, as it were, without any reference to Republicans.”

The President seems to say pretty clearly that he didn’t put the tax cuts in for the Republicans, he wanted them in there anyway, but maybe it would have been politically smarter to have let the Republicans put them in for him.

So Obama does seem to believe that the tax cuts belonged in the stimulus bill, deserved to be there. (Whether he also believes in the tooth fairy is still an open question.)