Slate's John Dickerson provides a serious analysis of Washington's unseriousness on, in this case, the budget:
The president is accused of not being serious from both the left and the right. Much of it is a critique of his public posture. His aides are working behind the scenes, but both Democrats and Republicans would prefer that Obama take a public role if for no other reason than to share some of the political risk of presenting voters with the inevitable hard choices. Some 64 senators from both parties -- enough to end a filibuster and almost enough to override a veto, both of which actions would qualify as serious -- recently sent the president a letter asking him to support and offer leadership on the deficit and debt.
We should of course keep in mind that this poltroonish behavior is nothing new. Since at least the Jay Treaty of 1794 -- a ratification instance in which President Washington realized with horror that the Senate was chock full of disputatious, self-absorbed buffoons -- Congress has chiefly worried not about the national interest, but reelection -- a serious instrument of which is, you got it, a deafening blame-spreader for anything Congress actually manages to do, or not.
It is a dispiriting paradox that just as Congress is railing against Obama's high-handedness in foreign affairs, in which Congress asserts a co-equal if not superior Constitutional authority, that same Congress is disavowing its obligations of negotiating a federal budget, for which it alone bears Constitutional authority.