If the test was likelihood of swaying the uncommitted, I saw no winner in last night’s broadcast contest. Obama and Boehner were both addressing mainly their own supporters. Neither rose above partisan talking-points.

The “balanced” approach advocated by Obama makes much more sense, though not because taxing corporate jets is a top national priority at the moment. Bearing in mind what is at stake, tirelessly underlining this point is ridiculous. The best thing about the White House’s approach is that it aims to backload the austerity (eg, by extending the payroll-tax cut). The GOP’s biggest mistake is to want to cut spending as much as possible as fast as possible: fiscally speaking, a self-defeating agenda.

So on the substance, Obama has the better plan–but his talk failed to make this clear. Presumably he thinks the argument for gradualism is already lost. Even if it is, though, his comments were odd. Almost in the same breath as “corporate jets” and “millionaires and billionaires”, he endorsed (admittedly without much enthusiasm) the Reid proposal, which includes no extra revenues. It was as though his remarks were written a week ago. Looking at where Congress stands at the moment, Obama’s main theme—we must have revenues as well as spending cuts–was simply beside the point. Congress is no longer even talking about this.