Presidential Press Conference

This was a precarious stance for Obama to take in the currently venomous climate toward Wall St.

As usual, the President talked to us like adults and asked us to behave accordingly. And he's right. But from a public relations perspective, he risked sounding sympathetic to a class of investors that have become public pariahs. And his comments came one day after he proposed a bank bailout that some people have characterized as a hand-out to the rich.

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Certainly the administration knows that any effort to temper public enmity towards Wall St. could make the President sound too conciliatory in an atmosphere where the electorate wants revenge. But this only underscores the depths of Obama's predicament: If he fuels that populist anger, he raises political barriers to the additional money Congress will need to authorize to aid the ailing economy.

So Obama has opted for a message of peacemaking. And he probably figures that Republicans can hardly quarrel with Obama's remarks, since they, too, need to make nice with their Wall St. base.

The prediction here is that Obama will pay a short-term price for his "don't demonize" remark, after the media finishes dissecting every word of the speech. The media began rumblings last week that Obama might be out of touch with the intensity of the public's spite, and unfortunately, his comment Tuesday night could be misconstrued as more evidence of that myth.

What is perhaps most admirable here, is that Obama is his message mavens are hardly oblivious to the criticism such remarks might provoke. But that hasn't deterred the President from saying what's necessary in a world of adults.