What did we learn from the last week’s unanimous rejection of the Democratic stimulus package by House Republicans? We learned President Obama, who ardently wooed Republicans, is more charming than he is persuasive. We learned Republicans, though they can’t win a vote, can win an argument. We learned the stimulus bill is too big, too porky, and hardly stimulative at all. And we learned Nancy Pelosi, the aggressively partisan House speaker, is by her own admission really and truly “non-partisan.”

That’s a lot of learning from one event at the outset of a new administration. But the stimulus–or “stimulus”–is one of the most important pieces of legislation in the Obama era, if not the most important of all. So the manner in which it progresses through Washington matters.