The most important question at last night's prime-time press conference, only the second of President Barack Obama's 64-day-old administration, wasn't even asked. Of the dozen reporters called on, not one inquired about the controversial new financial-stability plan the administration rolled out the day before. It was not, it turns out, a night for news making.

On the other hand, perhaps the press is ahead of the curve, or at least ahead of the administration. The first question, after all, concerned new authorities requested by the executive branch that would allow it to seize large, insolvent financial institutions, the Lehmans and AIGs of the world. While it is possible that the plan to create a public-private marketplace for toxic assets will ultimately lead to major banks under federal control, last night's conversation elided the whole problem. Obama neatly explained how receivership would prevent the problems exemplified by the AIG bonus scandal and the phrase "too big too fail." But seizing insolvent banks is not his administration's official position -- yet.

This has been something of a building week for Obama. Last week, the Washington conversation seemed stuck on populist fury over the AIG bonuses, even as a critical estimate projected deeper costs for the president's budget and debate over how to resolve the financial crisis intensified. The situation improved with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's Monday announcement of the new toxic-asset plan. But last night, anyone wondering whether the administration would be adjusting its proposals in the face of the first serious opposition to their domestic agenda received a curt answer: nope.

"This budget is inseparable from this recovery because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity," Obama said. The message was simple: a real recovery has to be sustainable, and that means investments in health care, energy, and education combined with strategies to cut the deficit. True, up-front costs are high, but the president is putting his foot down -- sometimes against the advice of his advisers -- and ensuring that this is the presidency that addresses the big questions, whatever else is going on. His willingness to engage in those debates diverges sharply from some members of his own party; Senate Democrats have already reinserted some of the Bush-era accounting gimmicks Obama removed from the budget in the name of transparency.

At the presser, Obama's aggressive tack ran headlong into a rule that applies to network news correspondents: You must obsess over the national debt. This lead to a dialogue that didn't reflect well on anyone involved. The reporters pressing the president on the budget treated the deficit and the debt as variables that exist independent of all other policy choices and mainly measure a politician's moral character. Obama, on the other hand, didn't do the best job of explaining the vagaries of growing out-year deficits, the mechanisms that pay for his new investments, or the fact that a majority of the new deficit is a Bush hangover. The facts are on the president's side, but his framing isn't as crisp as it could be.

But adaptability is part of the president's shtick, too. Last week's AIG bonus mess became this week's good reason for Congress to grant authority to seize insolvent financial institutions. This week's incipient battle over the size of the budget, with congressional Democrats likely to be the biggest thorn in the president's side, will have to produce a better frame for Obama's domestic agenda if he wishes it to come through the legislature with its central principles unscathed.

There was also a lack of foreign-policy discussion during the president's appearance. It would be wrong to think that it's not on the mind of either the media or Obama, but the administration expects to unveil the results of the Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review on Friday; questions on that central national-security issue would likely have been answered by kicking the can down the road. But one foreign-policy question at the end of the night -- on the seeming intractability of the Israel-Palestine conflict -- led the president to pivot to a broader theme.

"I'm a big believer in persistence," Obama said, explaining that though difficulties have arisen in the Middle East, "the status quo is unsustainable." As unsustainable as the situation is abroad, the domestic state of play is equally unacceptable, no matter how difficult changing the system might be.

"We are going to stay with it as long as I'm in this office," he continued. "You look back four years from now, I think, hopefully, people will judge that body of work and say, 'This is a big ocean liner. It's not a speedboat. It doesn't turn around immediately. But we're in a better -- better place because of the decisions that we made.'"

The new president has been ubiquitous as he continues to publicly campaign for his agenda. He's already had two prime-time press conferences, his predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush each had only four in the entire eight years of their respective presidencies. It's almost strange to think that Obama has only been in office for just over two months; his first major initiatives are barely beginning to take effect. He's facing the same old arguments about why a liberal agenda won't work in the United States. Last night was just another night of work, with the president laying out arguments about the direction of the country that he's been making for some time. You could call it persistence.