the President and the -- and the leaders all have to come out of their corners and arrive at some sort of deal in the immediate future that averts a default on the national debt.

The critical point is, as Moody's is warning, as Ben Bernanke warned today in Congress, the critical point is this country must not go into default on August 2nd.

The President has -- believes very strongly, and I have this on excellent authority today he believes very strongly he can bring along Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, kicking and screaming, to be sure.

His politics for 2012 is becoming apparent. He wants to win the independent vote. He does that by getting the big deal. But he needs to cut entitlements: Medicare and Social Security to get there.

It certainly suggests that the mode -- the tone the President set today is a -- is a tone set by someone who thinks that talks are near collapse or not going anywhere and he's trying to scold the Republicans into action.

Every major economist, every major financial institution -- the International Monetary Fund today issued a report saying there's going to be a severe shock to the economy nationally and internationally if we don't -- if we go into default.

If he really were truly near an agreement, I imagine he would have dropped all those snide comments about Republicans.

I'm sorry. Just let's get -- factually, the administration has never set four dates and said it's -- we're going to have real consequences if we don't hit this date.

Well, he has. He has chosen I think what was aptly called earlier tonight a Goldilocks strategy. And that is, there's some people who want to move out rapidly, some people who want to stay a long time. I'm going to choose the middle of…

I think it was a very good speech -- brought into focus his overall philosophy. And you have to say he promised as a candidate and early on in his presidency he would wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and try to do that…

There's a war weariness in the land, after 10 years.