Speaking on primetime TV from the I Killed Osama Bin Laden Memorial Hallway, President Barack Obama attempted to swing people power to his side in the debt-ceiling debate, using the trappings of the office and an appeal to America’s sense of compromise. Assuming it still has one.

Obama’s address was an unusually directly political speech by the standards of primetime Presidential Addresses. Rather than announcing information to the American people or commenting on a sudden news event, the speech sought to influence the actions of Congress, where Republicans have threatened to deny the government’s ability to pay its creditors unless they get cutbacks in Federal spending. So the networks gave response time to Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who doubled down on his refusal to give Obama a “blank check.”