By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

With his first economic stimulus bill failing so far, President Barack Obama Saturday said he didn't support a second shot of stimulus at this time. Thank goodness for that bit of common sense.

Too much of the initial $787 billion program has gone to expand the bloat of government bureaucracy and too little to fix the nation's infrastructure -- creating jobs along the way.

The administration is still pointing out that much of the money won't even be spent until 2010 -- or even 2011. But that's more reason to hold off on any second stimulus: We don't know whether the first one will work yet.

Fortunately, Obama seems to agree with that approach.

"We must let it work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity," Obama said Saturday.

That's little comfort to the millions of unemployed Americans, of course.

But Obama is correct to point out that Republican critics have not developed a consistent message of what they -- and the nation -- should be doing differently.

So with a weak GOP in Washington, Obama and the Democrats are getting to do pretty much what they want with the nation's economic policy.

For this time around, rejecting quick approval of a second stimulus makes a lot of sense.