In Melville's Moby Dick, the whaling ship Pequod crosses the equator on its quest for the White Whale, and in that instant, Captain Ahab smashes his quadrant to the deck and crushes it underfoot.  

No more careful navigation. It is, we understand, Moby Dick or die.

As we hurtle toward the new debt limit crisis, President Obama has done much the same. He says he won't negotiate spending cuts with a gun to his head. He's also said that he won't invoke § 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, with its provision that "the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned," to give him authority to continue borrowing once the debt limit has been reached. The Senate Democratic leadership Friday urged him to prepare to raise the ceiling unilaterally; so far, he has remained mum. 

Yet Obama, to all appearances, is the calmest man in this overheated capital as the doomsday clock counts down toward a first-ever U.S. default, and the almost certain global depression that would follow.  

Either Obama believes that the Republicans will, at the last moment, do the right thing, or he has a plan.