People say they would apportion blame about evenly between the Obama administration and the Republicans in the event of a government shutdown. Some 36 percent in a new Washington Post poll conducted with the Pew Research Center say they’d blame Republicans and 35 percent Obama, with 17 percent volunteering that they’d blame both.

These numbers differ from those in 1995 when then-president Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress squared off on the budget. Today, independents divide their blame between Obama and the GOP, by 37 to 32 percent. A little over 15 years ago, in Nov. 1995, independents were more clearly behind the president, blaming the GOP over Clinton by 46 to 24 percent.

In 1995, Republicans were less unified in blaming the opposition: 57 percent assigned fault to Clinton. In the new poll, 69 percent of Republicans say they’d blame Obama if the two sides can’t come to terms. By contrast, Democrats are somewhat less apt to blame the GOP today than they did in the early stages of the 1995 fight (63 vs. 71 percent).

Half of all those polled say Obama is playing politics with the issue and 43 percent say he is trying to resolve the dispute. Slightly more – 59 percent – say Republicans in Congress are playing politics vs. 33 percent who say they are trying to resolve the issue. These are roughly the same reactions people had in 1995.

The partisan splits on these questions are very similar. Sixty-one percent of independents say Obama is playing politics, but 63 percent also say this about the GOP. Among Republicans 70 percent say Obama is playing politics. Among Democrats, slightly more – 81 percent – say Republicans are playing political games.

The political consequences of a shutdown are daunting for either side and the economic conditions are quite different now than they were 15 years ago. In November 1995 the unemployment rate was 5.6 percent. Today it is hovering at 9 percent. The prospect of shutting more people out of work could be a tough political pill to swallow.

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Word that Jon Huntsman, the American ambassador in China and a possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, has a television crew following him around in Beijing has gotten the political world all, well, a-Twitter.

Reuters broke the original story, noting that the ambassador “has allowed a video crew to follow him in a range of settings over the past year” and musing that “it would undoubtedly come in handy in any political campaign.”

National Journal picked the story up in a little item. Politico went further on Thursday, quoting a law professor as saying that “If he gave this video crew any special access, or allowed them to do anything other video crews would not be allowed to do, then it would be a serious problem under the Hatch Act if the video were to be used for campaign purposes.”

And that notion bounced around in Twitter messages for the last 24 hours. One person wrote: “RT @pwire: Huntsman has a video crew following him in China… http://pwire.at/i2YBci | Hatch act violation?”

It’s a dramatic — and potentially illegal — notion: the idea that Mr. Huntsman, who has resigned his post effective the end of April, might have hired a television crew to document his time as ambassador for use in a potential presidential campaign.

But the truth seems to be far less sexy than all that. The Academy Award-winning producer of the documentary told The Caucus in an interview Thursday that she is making a film about diplomacy between the United States and China, and that Mr. Huntsman’s abrupt decision to resign has complicated her life.

“Bummer for us,” said Geralyn White Dreyfous, who said the film was not a campaign effort or in any way controlled by Mr. Huntsman. “We got permission from the State Department to make this film. We’re not making a film about Mr. Huntsman.”

The Huntsman family was at the center of the film, she said, which seeks to use his arrival in the country to tell the story about the pace of change in diplomacy over the past 30 years. She said she jokingly refers to them as the “Von Trapp family who arrives in Beijing — six kids, two dogs.” (It is a reference to the large family portrayed in the movie “The Sound of Music.”)

“We’re making a film about Chinese-U.S. diplomacy,” she said. “What better way to see it than to do it through this family?”

The future direction of the film is now in doubt, however. Ms. White Dreyfous said there is no chance that she will shift focus to Mr. Huntsman’s political ambitions and that his departure from China might mean that the film has to find another main character — perhaps the new ambassador who replaces him.

But that’s a daunting thought after 18 months, nine trips to China,and numerous interviews with Chinese scholars and others.

“Obama picks this very talented and unusual choice,” she said, explaining the initial motivation for the film. “It’s a new era. We’re going into the days of China being a superpower. What does our diplomacy have to be?”

The movie was originally scheduled to be finished in 2013 or 2014, after Mr. Huntsman had served as ambassador for a full four-year term. Now, the earliest the movie could be completed would be the first of the year, she said. But it is likely to take far longer than that if they have to go back to the drawing board.

Ms. White Dreyfous said she had never suspected that Mr. Huntsman might quit early or run for president in 2012. She said members of the Chinese media had repeatedly asked Mr. Huntsman that during his tenure there, and that he always just laughed.

Now, though, she’s dying to know whether he’s going to run.

“I’ve asked him,” she said. “He’s said he’s not doing anything until he comes back to Washington. He hasn’t said a word to me about it. I keep trying to get his wife and kids to talk to me about it. I really could not have predicted.”

Tim Miller, a spokesman for the Horizon Political Action Committee, which is serving as a possible campaign-in-waiting until Mr. Huntsman returns to the United States, said, “The PAC has absolutely no connection to the documentary, nor any formal or informal relationship with Ambassador Huntsman.”

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As Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona continues to make progress toward recovery from a gunshot wound to the head, an uncomfortable question is beginning to seep into the political conversation in Arizona and Washington.

What does the future hold?

Ms. Giffords was just beginning her third term in the House when she was was shot on Jan. 8 during a meet-and-greet event in her district. She remains in a Houston area rehabilitation facility as she works to recover, a process that, in spite of reports of her early progress, could be slow and difficult.

For weeks, there has been nearly no talk about her political future as members from both parties merely said they expect her to return to Washington whenever she is healthy enough to do so.

Now some of her closest friends in Washington are beginning to take steps to ensure that Ms. Giffords is politically strong as well. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York are hosting a fund-raiser for Ms. Giffords next month. The money could be used for Ms. Giffords to mount a re-election bid in 2012.

“We want to make sure that when she does come back, she’s not starting from scratch,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said in an interview Wednesday night. She said the fund-raiser would help Ms. Giffords be in the
“strongest possible position to run for re-election.”

And friends are also acknowledging a different possibility, prompted in part by the abrupt announcement last week that Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, would not seek re-election in 2012. Those close to Ms. Giffords said she had begun to talk about the possibility of running for the Senate before she was shot.

“It’s something that she talked about, but not something that she talked about in any great detail,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. “When she does come back, she will go through the same process that everyone who considers running for higher office does.”

The Arizona Democratic Party chairman, Andrei Cherny, told The Washington Post that “it goes without saying that even before the attack, she was at the top of everyone’s list.”

It is far too early in Ms. Giffords’s recovery to have serious conversations about a statewide candidacy, Ms. Wasserman Schultz said. And she stressed that before the shooting, the congresswoman from Arizona was focused primarily on representing her district and winning re-election in November 2012.

But even a mention that Ms. Giffords had been interested in running for the Senate has consequences for the Democratic Party in Arizona, and nationally, as the race to replace Mr. Kyl takes shape.

Mr. Kyl’s departure offers Democrats a rare opportunity to pick up a seat in a state where voting behavior during presidential races has been trending in their favor. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, won his own state that year, and won re-election to the Senate in November. But senior Democratic officials have said they believe the rapid growth in the state’s Hispanic population is making it friendlier territory for them.

However, other potential candidates, like Janet Napolitano, the Department of Homeland Security secretary and the state’s former governor, are all but frozen out of a public conversation about a possible run for now. And state Democratic Party officials are understandably wary of doing anything that might be interpreted as offensive to Ms. Giffords.

The dynamics are different on the Republican side, where Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona has already announced he will run for Mr. Kyl’s seat. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who gained national fame for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration, is reported to be actively considering a run as well.

What remains unknown is how long Democrats can wait for Ms. Giffords to improve. The election is almost two years away, but a competitive Senate contest will be very costly, and any contender will have plenty of campaigning to do.

There are precedents in other states that could help guide the Democratic Party as it carefully navigates the delicate issues of Ms. Giffords’s recovery and the party’s interests.

In South Dakota, for example, the state’s senior senator, Tim Johnson, had bleeding in the brain in December 2006 and underwent emergency surgery. He remained in a rehabilitation hospital for months and returned to the Senate for the first time nearly a year later, in September 2007.

Similarly with Ms. Giffords, colleagues helped raise money for Mr. Johnson while he was recuperating. And in 2008, he won another six-year term in the Senate.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz said that the fund-raiser for Ms. Giffords would be a reception that will take place in Washington. She said there is “no specific ask” in terms of the amount of money donors might contribute.

“We are encouraging people to come and join us and celebrate Gabby and make whatever contributions they are comfortable making,” she said.

Ms. Giffords had $285,000 cash on hand in her campaign account at the end of 2010, according to Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

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President Obama and his political rivals in Washington have jumped into the epic battle in Wisconsin between organized labor and the state’s newly elected Republican governor over the rights and benefits of state workers.

Efforts by Scott Walker, the state’s Republican governor, to slash collective-bargaining rights of public employees prompted days of protests at the state capitol by thousands of union workers, fueled and organized in part by Mr. Obama’s own political apparatus in Washington.

Even as Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin fled their own state in an attempt to stall a vote in the Republican-controlled state senate, Mr. Obama decried the tactics of Mr. Walker as “an assault on unions.”

That prompted House Speaker John Boehner to rip into Mr. Obama, accusing him of having “unleashed the Democratic National Committee to spread disinformation and confusion in Wisconsin.”

Mr. Boehner, in a statement, praised Mr. Walker and other Republican governors for making the tough decisions to cut spending. And he chided the president for siding with the wrong side in the contentious Wisconsin debate.

“Rather than shouting down those in office who speak honestly about the challenges we face, the president and his advisers should lead. Until they do, they are not focusing on jobs, and they are not listening to the American people who put them in power.”

The sharp-edged retorts from Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner reflect the broader debate in the nation’s capital as Democrats and Republicans dig in to rigid positions about spending, investment, the deficit and changes to entitlement programs.

In the next two weeks, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are set to play a game of chicken with the federal budget. The government’s authority to spend money runs out on March 4 and could force a shutdown in federal services unless the parties can agree on a new spending plan.

But despite recent calls for bipartisanship and promises to work together in Washington, the standoff in Wisconsin is a preview of how easily discussions could disintegrate into chaos.

For Mr. Boehner, the Wisconsin debate is another opportunity to preach a message of fiscal restraint in the face of demanding unions and government employees. Republican governors in several states, including Wisconsin, have said they must make drastic cuts to deal with huge budget problems.

By jumping quickly to condemn Mr. Obama’s comments, Mr. Boehner explicitly questioned the president’s leadership, suggesting he is unwilling to make the deep sacrifices necessary to put the country on the right fiscal path.

Other Republicans, too, see opportunity in the imagery coming out of Wisconsin. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who is trying to head off a primary challenge from the Tea Party in his state, praised Mr. Walker and other Republican governors for making “tough choices” in their budgets.

“It is too bad that Washington Democrats are attacking them rather than following their lead,” Mr. Hatch said on Thursday. “President Obama’s comments today were, frankly, way off base. The only assault is from a bunch of self-interested government union employees who are putting their interests ahead of the interests of the Wisconsin taxpayers who have been funding their runaway spending.”

He added: “This is not the way public servants should behave.”

Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the budget committee in the House, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison these days.”

For Mr. Obama and the Democrats, the Wisconsin debate provides an opportunity to stand by their supporters in organized labor in a part of the country that is likely to be an important battleground during the 2012 presidential election campaign.

It also allows Democrats to once again raise questions about Mr. Boehner’s willingness to see government jobs lost.

This week, Democrats seized on Mr. Boehner’s comment that if government jobs were lost because of the cuts that Republicans are calling for, then “so be it.” Democrats now view the situation in Wisconsin as another example of Mr. Boehner taking sides against workers.

Former Representative David Obey of Wisconsin on Thursday accused Mr. Walker of acting like Hosni Mubarak, the deposed president of Egypt, as protestors marched in the streets of Cairo.

“I think what Gov. Walker is trying to do amounts to political thuggery,” Mr. Obey told Talking Points Memo. “It is one thing to say that these are tough times — everybody’s got to cut back and public employees are going to have to take cuts like the rest of us … but he’s using it as an excuse to gut the ability of workers to organize and bargain collectively. In my view that’s outrageous.”

A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee declined to respond to Mr. Boehner’s accusation of spreading disinformation. But officials confirmed that Organizing for America, an arm of the party, has been “quietly, but significantly, involved in
building grassroots energy and organizing protests.”

The political efforts on behalf of the union workers in Wisconsin were undertaken at the direction of Tim Kaine, the D.N.C. chairman, according to officials at the party.

In addition to helping build crowds for two rallies in Madison this week, O.F.A. organized 15 “rapid-response phone banks” aimed at getting supporters to call state lawmakers. The effort covered 10 cities in Wisconsin, officials said.

Volunteer leaders of O.F.A. helped organize the rallies and youth leaders at college campuses brought buses to help transport people. Another O.F.A. program sought to get letters published in 23 targeted newspapers in Wisconsin. O.F.A. also used blogs, Facebook, Twitter and e-mail messages to rally opposition to Mr. Walker’s efforts.

Mr. Boehner, in his comments Thursday, said Mr. Obama should call a stop to those efforts.

“I urge the president to order the D.N.C. to suspend these tactics,” Mr. Boehner said. “This is not the way you begin an ‘adult conversation’ in America about solutions to the fiscal challenges that are destroying jobs in our country.”

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President George W. Bush says he has left politics for good and has no plans to raise money and work for Republican candidates.

The former president, who has maintained a low profile since handing over the White House to Barack Obama in 2009, said in an interview with C-span: “I don’t want to go out and campaign for candidates. I don’t want to be viewed as a perpetual money-raiser.”

“I don’t want to be on these talk shows, giving my opinion, second-guessing the current president,” he added. “I think it’s bad for the country, frankly, to have a former president criticize his successor.”

The interview was taped Monday at Southern Methodist University, the future site of Mr. Bush’s presidential library. It will air Sunday on C-Span’s “Q & A” at 8 p.m. eastern time.

The former president discussed his 2010 memoir, “Decision Points” and why it didn’t mention Scott McClellan, his long-time aide and longest serving press secretary.

Mr. McClellan, who joined Mr. Bush’s communications team when he was governor of Texas, was the president’s press secretary from 2003-2006.

Two years after leaving the White House, Mr. McClellan released his own memoir titled “What Happened” in which he criticized Mr. Bush’s governing style and his handling of the campaign to invade Iraq.

In the interview, Mr. Bush said Mr. McClellan was irrelevant.

“He was not a part of a major decision. This is a book about decisions. This isn’t a book about, you know, personalities or gossip or settling scores. I didn’t think he was relevant.”

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FNC’s Glenn Beck argues political and economic power is becoming more global and should be given to the states.