Over at National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru worries that conservatives are gloating prematurely at the failure of the $787 billion stimulus package to produce economic growth or jobs. What, he asks, if they do next year? Isn’t the Right setting itself up to seem like the skunk at the garden party if and when things turn around? Shouldn’t a different argument be deployed?

Perhaps. But it probably doesn’t matter very much what people on the Right say about this. If there is a roaring recovery next year, Obama will benefit; if, on the other hand, the rise from recession is slow and ungainly and not especially productive, as was the case with the recovery from the short recession of 2001, then Obama and the Democrats will suffer mightily. What will matter over the next two elections when it comes to the economy is whether the public feels as though the hand on the tiller guiding the country through the economic crisis is steady and knowing or haphazard and incompetent. Spin won’t help anyone very much.