In Twitterworld, there’s some discussion of whether the Obama administration timed the announcement of Ben Bernanke’s reappointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve to drown out the horrific new deficit numbers and increasingly lousy economic projections. (The White House had told reporters on the Obama beat that they did not intend to make any news this week.)

I’m not so sure this is the case, as reappointing a key watchdog of the nation’s economy doesn’t exactly take the state of the economy out of the news. Eric Holder’s decision to investigate the CIA represents a greater change in the subject.

But in either case, the deficit numbers don’t go away just because they get bumped to page A3. “We’re spending way, way more than we can afford” has been a rallying cry of both Republicans and Blue Dogs; the power of the issue of the deficit doesn’t go away just because it’s competing with some other news stories today.

Beyond that, I’d prefer to see the Obama administration spend less time fighting headlines about the deficit and spend more time fighting the actual deficit.