Via Atrios, this depressing item:

Asked if the stimulus bill was too small, [White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs says: “I think it makes sense to step back just for a second. … Nobody had, in January of 2009, a sufficient grasp of … what we were facing.” He adds that any stimulus was “unlikely to fill” the hole the financial meltdown created.

“What the Recovery Act did was prevent us from sliding even into a deeper recession with greater economic contraction, with greater job loss than we have experienced because of it,” he says.

The truth is that some of us were practically screaming back in January 2009 that the administration was proposing too small a program. Start with this post and work forward. And no, the point isn’t that I’m so smart — it is that given the forecasts we had at the time, and given historical experience of recessions after financial crises, it wasn’t at all hard to see that the plan was too small. Things have been worse than expected — but not that much worse.

And why does this matter? Because the best chance Obama et al have to change things now is to make the case that we need to do more, and that Republicans stand in the way. Yet here they are, apparently trying to run on the claim that they had it right all along, or something. Is this just boneheaded political strategy? Is it about the egos of the advisers who called it wrong? I don’t know — but it fills me with despair.

PS: I see that some commenters are trying to claim that I was enthusiastic about the Obama stimulus at some point, citing this post. You know what to do — read what I actually wrote:

And the current situation is no better — actually, worse — that I thought it would be when arguing that the Obama economic plan was inadequate. Read this, and bear in mind that the unemployment rate is now 9.4%.

The stimulus has helped, and the conventional recession is over. But the economy is not recovering in the most crucial area, job creation, and the stimulus won’t be enough to restore prosperity.