"John Boehner is like a Republican state senator," the president tells his inner circle, according to Woodward. "He's a golf-playing, cigarette-smoking, country-club Republican who's there to make deals. He's very familiar to me." Obama's advisers felt the need to warn their boss that he was underestimating the political risks of dealing directly with the GOP leader.

The president, bent on making a "grand bargain" with Boehner on deficit reduction, is characterized as sticking to a kinder and gentler view of his negotiating partner. "His motivation is pure," the president told his aides. "He just can't control the forces in his caucus now" and Boehner sized up his adversary during one of his early private meetings with Obama, telling Woodward: "I just started chuckling to myself. Because all you need to know about the differences between the president and myself is that I'm sitting there smoking a cigarette, drinking merlot, and I look across the table and there is the president of the United States drinking iced tea and chomping on Nicorette," the gum for smokers trying to break their habit.

Cantor warned Biden that many new House Republicans were willing to risk a default in their zeal to reduce government spending, telling the vice president: "We really have members who don't get the need to raise the debt ceiling." "So you're looking for Democrats to be more responsible than you?" Biden said. "You can't use the irresponsibility of your own members to get your way."

Cantor is quoted as replying: "Why don't you just say it's the crazy Republicans made you do it?"