The president is frantically positioning himself as “the adult in the room.” Despite having voted against a debt-ceiling increase back in 2006, Obama now says it is “irresponsible” to play politics with the national debt. He wants a long-term deal that both cuts trillions from the federal debt and raises the ceiling, hoping to avoid a messy reprise of this fight just before his 2012 re-election bid. And in what looks like classic Clinton-esque triangulation, he’s calling on his own party to accept cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security even as he insists that Republicans must accept revenue increases.