A fiasco, a couple Government Shutdowns. We are headed potentially for something thats so much worse than anything weve ever seen. The shutdown itself is a Little League baseball game compared to the world series of fiascos if they let this debt ceiling, if they tolerate it to fall. I all my reporting cant come up with an end game. I still think it wont happen and i think any kind of end game you come up with is only going to kick the can down the road on these other issues. But i think right now we are headed for a potential political and economic cataclysm unless serbia somebody gets wisner the next seven days. Rose chuck . Well, charlie, there was one thing the president did is he put himself out there supporting something that i know that both major and i have been hearing over the last couple of days which is the president will support anything boehner sends him that is quote unquote clean without any of those extraneous politicallycharged amendments on both a spending bill and a debt limit and hell tape it for any length of time. So six weeks, eight weeks, something very short term. President very explicit that hed be willing to sign that and then essentially agree that in that sixweek period theyd be locked in some form of negotiations. He even got into the so he sort of outlined what he was willing to say which could be, arguably, a compromise. What was astounding to me is boehner took that offer and called that agreeing to that Unconditional Surrender. So while i was somewhat optimistic that the president was at least painting the kick can can down the road end game scenario that albert was just referring to there, babers response to it tells you that maybe we should have no hope that this is going to end the way we all thought it was going to end. Rose major . Well, charlie, what we have is a disagreement about how to talk and when to talk. Both sides say theyre willing to talk. John boehner has now reduced his sum total of demands from House Republicans to a conversation. A conversation that has no known or defined conclusion. Just a conversation. Thats a pretty flexible definition of what republicans would agree to. The president said hes willing to negotiate about a broad number of topics, even changes to his beloved health care law. So both sides have staked out positions that are negotiable if in fact, they want to find a resolution. Rose mark, it was i think last friday that there was a story the times that the speaker had said he would not allow a default. Are we s where that idea now that the speaker will not allow a default. Well, you know, the speaker is said to have said this privately to his colleagues. On the weekend, on the sunday shows he painted himself into much tougher corner by saying that the u. S. Was on the road to default and he wasnt willing to rule it out and, you know, i think to pick up on one albert said, a big part of the president s message today was his trying to bat down this idea that either a default is inconceivable or that a default isnt as cot strofk as some people would say it is. He basically made the point that it is everybody bit as ruinous as you think its going to be and he went after people who are trying to argue including some republicans that we should test the proposition. I think also he was responding a little bit to what we wrote about today which is that the Financial Markets continue to view default as one Hedge Fund Guy put it as a black swan event. Just something thats so inconceivable that its not really priced into the markets yet. Sy think the president was trying to say today it is conceivable. Rose theres also this question about negotiations back and forth on this. Is the president on firm ground when he says im not going to me gauche because they ought to do what they are supposed to do. Thats what they were hired to do is to pass debt ceiling and also vote on the budget and i dont want to do that. I dont want to the negotiate because if i do well be doing this all the time and well get nothing else done. Is he on film ground in making that argument . Well, i would say that ultimately hes the guarantor of the nations credit worthiness. So i think its a difficult argument to say that im not going to negotiate because this is what these people are hired to do if youre really staring down the barrel at a default. Which is why i think he did open the door to this shorter timetable negotiations, some form of a clean c. R. What the interesting thing about that is he said in the same breath we cant keep lurching from one manufactured crisis to the other. And thats in fact, what hed be setting up if he were to engage in some timebound short period of negotiation. Rose chuck, you were shaking your head. No, it is. In one breath the president was saying we cant keep doing it this way on the other hand he was basically offering boehner a way out. You know, any time you negotiate with somebody on high stakes and you think that you have to come to some sort of agreement you want to give your opponent even if you think you have to upper hand. I think the president believes he does. I think you look at the polls he believes he does. I think the democrats certainly feel and this is Senate Democrats in particular believe that by agreeing to certain spending levels, by agreeing to have this short term that they have already come halfway to the republican position at this point and that theyre not going to give any more ground until the republicans simply flip the switch on the government and temporarily raise the debt ceiling so as to just shift the cataclysmic event that could take place on october 17, shift it to november 15 or december 1, whatever it is the agreed upon number so i think that it doesnt whether he is or not on Firm Position, i think the president believes politically hes certainly in pretty Firm Position on this. Charlie, this is an Important Note there and the white house wanted to make this clear after the president s press conference ended that even in accepting a six or eightweek or nineweek increase of the governments Borrowing Authority to avoid default, the president would do that with no conditions applied whatsoever. The White House Position is he wants to break the president , that is wants to break the fever of House Republicans either assuming that a default doesnt matter or its not as economically injurious as the president and other economics say it is and also break the fever that this can be a forcing mechanism in into which they can inject conversations about policy disagreements of long standing with this white house. Those are the two things the president wants to do. Now, is he on historically accurate grounds saying that the nonnegotiating position is tenable . Well, if you look at the history of this, no, hes not. Other president s negotiated lots of policy compromises around a debt ceiling increase. The one difference the president makes is under those circumstances the question of default was never a real live time bomb. The president believes it is now and he has to diffuse it and the only way he believes he can diffuse it is to not accept any conditions at all around a debt ceiling increase. Rose charlie, let me jump in. I think you have to differentiate between the shutdown and the debt ceiling. I think the shutdown is something that politicians will play politics with and thats happened before and it will happen again and its unfortunate, there may be a political price to pay, its an inconvenience. Some people really get a raw deal. But that is a different issue than an actual default. Major is right, there have been games before but nothing like this. This is unprecedented. Frankly, there should not where a debt ceiling. Its a silly an akronism that is only used by politician but to play to get this close to it to play to the point where there is a something close to a 5050 possibility that well default is this is where the president does have the high ground. Much more so than on the shutdown and i cant going back to what chuck said before, i cant quite understand john boehner here. There have been so many different John Boehners it depends on the day of the week. He obviously is feeling tremendous pressure. I suspect he hates his job. And he probably realizes that okay if they do kick the can down the road for six or eight weeks, as chuck said earlier, what do you kick the a k down the road to do . The same problems that existed going back to that that supercommittee of two years ago. Theres no deal to be had will there. Republicans wont will only accept a deal that just involves entitlements and democrats say no way theyll do that and dont forget you have Congressional Democrats as well as obama. So that is a nonstarter. So its hard to fine you can do little thing, the medical device tax could go but thats not very big. Its hard to find what a deal would be. Rose very quickly, charlie. The issue here is boehner this isnt about finding the votes and boehner believes that he is Holding Together such a Fragile Coalition inside the Republican Party and the problem is he has a Tea Party Caucus that, frankly, anything that isnt some sort of Unconditional Surrender on the president s part when it comes to health care or some of these drawing the lines in the sand on spending, theyre not going to accept any form of compromise. Boehner knows that so he has to draw this line. But boehner is holding this together. This isnt about saving his speakership. This is about making sure there isnt open warfare inside the Republican Party because of a compromise that looks like to the Tea Party Wing of the party capitulation to the president. If it looks like that which is what boehner fears then katie bar the door, every republican official is in deep trouble with this fervent its a minority inside the Republican Party but its an active one and they could cause real damage. Rose chuck, i know you have to go. Thank you so much for joining me. You got it, thanks, charlie. Rose let me come to you, major. What pressure points remain to be used that have not been used . Is anything that is not being utilized to bring some negotiation or some capitulation or some blinks that will end up with no disaster on october 17 . The only one i can think of right now, charlie, is the calendar itself. We are entering a phase of american politics in which external events, forcing mechanisms, appear to be the only way in which Congressional Republicans and Congressional Democrats and the president who disagree about issues are forced into an agreement. Outside external events, the National Process of legislating things, holding votes, having committee meetings, matching legislation and horse trading, all those other historically reliable means of resolving differences do not currently apply, forcing mechanisms from the outside like the pressure of a Government Shutdown which loomed for a while that were now into deeply, for the eighth day, that wasnt forcing mechanism enough. The default scenario is the last biggest and most historically important forcing mechanism ever and to pick up on al hunts point, if that is not the forcing mechanism, if thats not the vice that takes these disparate interests and shoves them together, if even for six or eight weeks, we have really entered a fundamentally new era of politics where political indecision and the inability to reach compromise and a deal even an unsatisfactory one begins to inflick economic harm not just here but throughout the Global Economic system. Rose and, mark, if you hear that argument, what do the 20 to 30 members of the Republican Tea Party who are behind this sty that very argument . To some extent we havent really tested it yet in the sense that as we get closer to it and as the markets begin to react that argument will be made to them ever more vividly. I think some of them play it down. Some of them try to argue that, well, we dont know whether its really this calamitous. Thats, again, what the president was trying to knock down today in the news conference. And, you know, he pointed out himself that even flirting with a default as we did the last time was enough to downgrade our debt for the first time in eons and raise our borrowing costs. So as you get into these kind of external events that major was talking about those members of the caucus will have to answer those. And some of the arguments they are making that maybe this is survivable or theres a way to do it thats not calamitous, that will be a harder and harder argument to make. Rose the end, al, does the president have to negotiate simply because he cannot allow default because he understands the consequences . I honestly dont think hes going to on the question of the debt ceiling. Charlie, i think there are two possible escapes, one doubtful, the other dangerous. The doubtful one is that the senate goes ahead and with ten or 12 republicans votes a clean debt ceiling bill and they say okay, weve passed a bipartisan debt ceiling. The problem is that those 50 or 60 Tea Party Members of the house could care wlaesz those ten or 12 republican senators think. The more dangerous possibility is sort of a replay of the tarp vote in 2008 where we actually go into a default for a day or two and see what a financial cataclysm it is and they quickly rush to try to rectify it. But, boy, that in itself is incredibly dangerous. Rose al lab, thank you. Mark, thank you so much. Major, good to see you. Good to see you, charlie. Rose well be right back. Stay with us. At that point, you put the tail on the head of the zombie and hit it very hard on top with one of the bureau drawers and then you kick it backwards and leap gracefully laughter applause Rose Margaret atwood is here. She had written more than 40 books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her work has the rare distinction of attracting both critical and commercial success. Her new book, maddaddam, completes a trilogy that began with oryx crake and continued with the year of the flood. Im pleased to have her here at this table again. Welcome. Thank you. Rose is a trilogy saturday . It was hard for me. Rose because . It was really long and also i had to keep track of all the little details. Sort of like continuity in a film. So if the person has blue eyes in this scene then theyve got to have blue eyes in that scene. Rose and when you set out the do this, do you do it because you cant put it all in one novel . Well, i didnt intend to do three when i did the first one but right after they realized there were going to be a lot of questions so i went sbe the corners of that world to explore two other groups of people but it did take me a little bit of time. Rose whats the theme here . The struggle for survival . I think the theme is probably like a lot of books of this kind about imagined futures. The theme is really human nature. So who are we really. What are we capable of . How far can we change without ceasing to be ourselves . Rose do you begin with that big idea that you want to have and then you create characters and then you create what happens to your characters plot . I think i begin by thinking about extinction. Rose really. What it would be like if we were all facing engs tings . Not just us but various other creatures on the planet who, indeed, are facing extinction. But we have faced extinction in the past several times and we did make it through so we might this time as well. Rose this is called speculative fiction. Thats my term for it. Its in dispute. laughs rose so its thinking about the future and speculating what it might be and making it fiction . For me it means faking about the fiction with things we already have. So 1984 is speculative fiction. Star wars, Science Fiction fantasy. In another galaxy far, far away. 1984 this planet, stuff weve already got. Rose and this is a reference to noah and the origins of the bible . To adam, yes. So in the first book, oryx crake, theres a web site called mad mad and its logan is adam named the animals maddaddam. Rose what kind of world are you depicting here . Im depicting two parts of that world, number one, the future before, number two which is when a man made virus wipes out most of us. Mad mad. Rose which is a possibility. yes, people are indeed creating my cobs in the lab. Rose that could escape. Or somebody might take the top off the box on purpose. Rose so it could be malicious behavior. It could well be. Is. Rose is there anything different about creating these characters versus other characters . Your novels . For me no. I like to give my characters a past and i like to let them eat food. So novelists dont allow their characters to eat. The you notice in daschle ham met nobody ever eats. So i like to give them a parent. Youll notice that Sherlock Holmes has no parents. Hes got a brother but no parents. We never hear about the childhood of young sherlock, do we. Rose no. But i like to have childhood rose you want all of your characters to be fully functioning human beings. Well, i like to know where they came from. How come theyre like that. If. Rose how do you explain hour come theyre like that . Well, you know, you never really know, but in a novel ever since the 19th century in Great Expectations we like to know a little bit about the characters childhood. At least i do. Rose so what interests you the most in . This line of conversation were having now, are you interested in politics . Are you interested in International Terrorism . What is it . Do i have to choose . laughs rose fair enough. But all of these things, its a novelist garden. Thats where the novelist goes. Im interested in just about everything but not all novelists are like me. Some people wouldnt say well, im interested in my hometown or im interested in my age group or im interested in new technologies or im intere