 President Barack Obama elbowed his way back into the debt ceiling debate Monday night, three days after Republicans shoved him out, but he offered no hint of a solution to the escalating political and financial crisis. Republicans not only rejected revenue hikes, they demanded a dollar of spending cuts for every dollar the debt ceiling was raised. Text Size - 
 
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 reset 'Let's seize this moment' 'President wants a blank check today' POLITICO 44 
 
 With neither Obama nor House Republicans yet willing to make the final compromise necessary to seal a deal, the leader of the free world made a stunning appeal for regular citizens to call or email their representatives to end what he called the “most dangerous game.” 
 
 “This is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. The fact is, Obama’s $2.4 trillion increase (a number that never appears in the speech) does precisely what Obama says it doesn’t: it “allow[s] Congress to spend more money.” It is not the case that Obama’s debt ceiling hike “simply gives our country the ability to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up.” 
 
 It would be nice to have a president who spoke candidly to his fellow citizens as adults.
– President Obama and John Boehner gave dueling speeches last night, and the news was not good. Here's what the pundits are taking away from it all: If people—or markets—were looking for reassurance, “they were out of luck,” observes Politico. Instead, Obama and Boehner “treated viewers to the unsettling spectacle of two leaders talking past, not to, each other,” with Obama even issuing a “stunning” plea for people to call their representatives. Obama’s speech proved this isn’t a left vs. right debate. “It’s center vs. right,” argues EJ Dionne of the Washington Post. “There was nothing remotely ‘left’ in this speech.” With some deft rhetorical touches—like quoting Ronald Reagan— “my hunch is that Obama’s speech spoke more to middle-of-the-road Americans.” But William Kristol of the Weekly Standard thought Obama came across as condescending—especially when he said most Americans had probably never heard of the debt ceiling. “It would be nice to have a president who spoke candidly to his fellow citizens as adults,” he writes. Boehner, meanwhile, went “full-tilt Tea Party crazy,” writes Joan Walsh of Salon. He acted as though he and Obama had never discussed a deal at all, while demanding a balanced budget amendment—which is “extraordinarily apocalyptic and insane,” because Boehner knows that can’t pass. “Hell, he probably doesn’t even want it.” He’s just moving the goal posts on Obama again.