This is what I think we're seeing:

The president has backed away from a military strike in Syria. But he can't acknowledge this or act as if it is true. He is acting and talking as if he's coolly, analytically, even warily contemplating the Russian proposal and the Syrian response. The proposal, he must know, is absurd. Bashar Assad isn't going to give up all his hidden weapons in wartime, in the middle of a conflict so bitter and severe that his forces this morning reportedly bombed parts of Damascus, the city in which he...