Biden and McConnell have a debt limit past. Can they deliver another late-inning save?
Late in the musical Hamilton, President George Washington asks Alexander Hamilton to "help" him write his farewell speech. Hamilton desperately wants his longtime mentor to stay in office, but Washington presses the quill pen upon him insistently as he sings "One Last Time."
The city named for Washington still has a way of pressing certain distasteful responsibilities on its lead actors – even when they would rather be in a different role, or in a different drama altogether.
And that sets the scene that now confronts Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader for the past 16 years.
On Tuesday, President Biden will commence a round of talks with the top leaders of the two parties in the two chambers of Congress. The sole topic will be the U.S. debt limit and the latest round in Washington's perennial crisis over raising its self-imposed limit on its borrowing.
The zoom-in camera focus will be on the president, as always, and for the first time on last month by a vote of 217-215.
