On Sunday, in response to questions about his debt ceiling talks with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Joe Biden told reporters, “Well, I’ve learned a long time ago, and you know as well as I do: it never is good to characterize a negotiation in the middle of a negotiation.”

Given the opaque and abstract nature of the debt ceiling, and the fact that there has been so much talk and no action for so long, it would be easy to miss the significance of this remark. But the White House has said for months — and as recently as Friday — that it would not negotiate with Republicans over lifting the debt ceiling. Given the potentially catastrophic results of defaulting, Biden argued, Republicans should not be allowed to extract concessions in exchange for completing one of Congress’s most routine and perfunctory tasks.

But it seems that all this stance resulted in was a lot of wasted time.