These Village enablers have a lot of nerve ...

Barack Obama campaigned as the man who would bridge the divides of right and left, reach out with ideas to red and blue America and create a United States of America.

Now, the Republicans have been very obstructionist. They have played hard-to-get. But certainly on health care, Obama never really tried to make the compromises that might have gotten some key conservatives on board.

In a recent "Wall Street Journal" poll, Obama did all right on most categories of leadership. The public still admires him as a person and as a leader. But his worst score was in response to the question, has he changed the way Washington works?

See, America wants a president who at least tries to effect that change. That's the change we all want to believe in.

Three weeks ago the new chancellor, 39-year-old Tory George Osborne, presented a budget that promised to get Britain’s fiscal house in order with sharp cuts in spending, coupled with tax increases. It landed in the midst of a heated debate across the industrialized world about how to best get the economy back on track. Osborne and his boss, Prime Minister David Cameron, have come down firmly on one side of this debate, hoping that a major effort to reduce the deficit will reassure bond markets and investors that Britain is a safe and compelling place to put their money.

Leaving aside the economics of this, what struck me as I spent time in Britain last week was the politics of deficit reduction. Having announced major cuts in popular programs, plus hefty tax increases, the Cameron government might be expected to be losing popularity by the day. But in fact the budget was well received by the public—though attacked ferociously from the left—and the governing coalition has actually inched up a bit in the polls...

It’s heartening to see a government do something that it must have thought would be deeply unpopular, and then be rewarded by the public...

The good news is that Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican chair of the House Budget Committee, has put out a budget plan for the next year and beyond that tries to tackle America's biggest long-term problem, entitlement spending that is careening out of control.

The bad news is, his plan wouldn't work. But I still applaud him for his courage in taking on the toughest topic and for proposing painful remedies. Any solution to Medicare will involve cuts and they will be unpopular.

So, what's wrong with Ryan's plan? Well, it's an odd proposal from a man who seems genuinely committed to a solution to the U.S. fiscal crisis. The plan does not touch social security. It actually increases defense spending over the next 10 years, then it never actually explains what it will cut from discretionary spending. It simply asserts spending will go down massively...

So why do I applaud the Ryan plan? Because it is the first serious effort to begin talking about restructuring entitlements, which is a necessity. Democrats can attack the plan but they, too, must face up to the fiscal reality and come up with their own plans.

MATTHEWS: Fareed, you're watching that from--say you were over in the Middle East watching the president of the United States on this humongous aircraft carrier. It looks like it could take down Syria just one boat, right, and the president of the United States is pointing a finger and saying, `You people with the weapons of mass destruction, you people backing terrorism, look out. We're coming.' Do you think that picture mattered over there?

Mr. ZAKARIA: Oh yeah. Look, this is a part of the war where we have not--we've allowed a lot of states to do some very nasty stuff, traffic with nasty people and nasty material, and I think it's time to tell them, you know what, `You're going to be held accountable for this.'