The President is cutting his vacation short, I think, because he heard the chatter from the public about his vacation costing the taxpayers $4 million while so many Americans have not been able to take a vacation in many years. I know he has already been reelected but he will always be in campaign mode and this could have been a PR nightmare. While we go over the cliff, the last thing he wanted to see was the picture of him laughing it up on the links. It is strictly political that he is coming back to Washington. The polls indicate that the Republicans have lost the debate over the tax increase issue but there must be some internals showing a little more going on than this. The president could have just stayed in Hawaii and called news conferences to blame Republicans as he usually does. I think there must be some indication that people realize that the president has not put forward a serious proposal and the Senate has done nothing but stand in the way of a deal being consummated.