The contemporary American right ain’t the Harvard Law Review, where he was once able to get conservatives and critical race theorists to sit in the same room and reason together. Does he still really believe he can do this with today’s Republican Party? He apparently does. It’s hard to figure out why else he would have used Monday night’s speech to continue to argue for a “balanced” approach that was already off the table. He really must have thought Republicans would be inundated by constituent phone calls, come to their senses, and realize that, by golly, they’d better sit down and reason with Mr. Reasonable.

If Obama thinks that, then he is caught up in mere egoism, and he is paradoxically harming the republic he believes he is protecting by behaving so reasonably and responsibly. In that case, reasonably trying to lead good-faith negotiations will have morphed into unreasonably permitting a catastrophe to happen for the sake of holding on to a naive belief. His responsibility now is to the citizens and taxpayers, not to some civic ideals and a self-image that reality has long since mooted.

What seems likeliest to me now is a short-term extension and more of this torture. But that could well still lead to a bond downgrading. Whereas if Obama moved forcefully and said. “I am the president, and I met them here and here and here, and they wouldn’t budge, and I’m finished with them, and now is the time to act,” I have little doubt that the markets—and the people—would react positively.