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It is good to be the king.

That old adage holds, even though nowadays we call our chief executive "Mr. President."

After another long day of showdown over the shutdown, President Obama was able to dominate the headlines, break the tension and change the atmosphere in Washington. He could demonstrate everything that is different about being in the White House – as opposed to that other House where Speaker John Boehner lives.

The President could do all this just by putting out the word that he was about to appoint the most powerful central banker in the world. Extra added kicker: the appointee would be the first woman in history to hold the job.

Nice way to flex 'em if you've got 'em.

The announcement that Janet Yellen would move up from vice chair to chairman of the Federal Reserve was long awaited and, in recent weeks, all but certain. Still Yellen's final ascent also symbolized several things about this point in the Obama presidency that are important for the current standoff with House Republicans and Boehner, their titular leader.

First, it reminded the world that someone is in charge of something in Washington and serving the continuity of the Federal Reserve and the American economy. This stands in contrast to the president's chief congressional antagonists, who are on TV saying it's not a problem if the United States runs out of borrowing authority and that default on U.S. debt is a scare tactic. (Boehner may not share either of those views, but given his situation he cannot denounce them, either.)

Second, the Yellen move demonstrated that Democrats are finally aware of the importance of unity and actually paying their dues to the club. Everyone knows Obama was intrigued with the idea of a different Fed nominee, his former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. But the brilliant and abrasive Summers had long since alienated much of Obama's power base in Congress and in the country. Democratic women in the Senate in particular were opposed. This time, the president got the message. And let's be frank, right now he needs a united Democratic Party more than ever before.

(For the moment, at least, that unity is holding. Even Democratic senators facing re-election in red states next year are sticking with Majority Leader Harry Reid on difficult votes. The contrast could not be more potent, as Hill Republicans in both chambers are as riven with dissent and disarray on strategy and tactics as at any time in modern memory.)

Third, the Yellen move showed that the president can still use his powers of office and matchless media access to change the game. In recent days, many Republicans have begun to convince themselves that the drubbing they took in the government shutdown war of 1995-1996 was strictly a matter of then-President Bill Clinton's charm and media savvy.

Without taking anything away from "Slick Willie," that outcome 18 years ago had at least as much to do with the inherent powers of the presidency and the tunnel vision of House Republicans.

The Yellen news came at the end of a day of sharp distinctions between the champions of the two parties. The president had staged the longest news conference of his five years in office, well over an hour, fielding questions from as far away as Australia. Not long after, Speaker Boehner came to a microphone in the Capitol looking and sounding tired. He read a statement imploring the president to negotiate, briefly responded to three questions and abruptly walked away.

Boehner has never been one for news conference jousting. He raises his voice in such settings as if addressing a crowd gathered at a picnic. And in the present moment he has less reason than ever to take questions.

Boehner after all does not want to repeat his claim that the House lacks the votes to pass a funding resolution, as he did over the weekend. That assertion brought howls of disbelief from all those willing to count votes in both parties. And when he says his Republican caucus is standing on principle, it's not clear whether that principle has to do with debts and deficits or last-ditch resistance to the Affordable Care Act.

Few would doubt that for Boehner himself the Big Deal is fiscal. But he cannot cut loose the GOP contingent that would shut down government functions – including the honoring of U.S. debt obligations – rather than be seen as accepting "Obamacare."

If he were to isolate that contingent, as many Republicans urge, Boehner would make himself vulnerable to their ire. It could happen in a closed-door GOP meeting or out on the House floor, where breakaway Republicans might join their votes with those of the Democrats in order to remove the Speaker in mid-session. That weapon hasn't been used in a century, but it's still there on the wall.

All this means that each day John Boehner wakes up as Speaker could be his last. And that too poses a stark contrast with the man in the White House.

The standoff is not going to end soon. But it will end. And certain facts remain. If you hold the high cards, the game eventually comes to you.

There's been a deadly fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh — the latest in a series of such tragedies and just six months after the worst disaster in the history of the global garment industry.

At least 10 people were killed at the Aswad garment factory outside the capital Dhaka early Wednesday. The immediate cause was not known. This factory, like others where tragedy has struck, produced clothes for a number of Western companies.

Here's more from The Wall Street Journal:

"Aswad Composite Mills has recently produced clothes for Western retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Loblaw Cos., the Canadian owner of the Joe Fresh label, and Hudson's Bay Co., according to several online shipping databases. Hudson's Bay said it last received a delivery from the factory in April and subsequently decided it would no longer place orders with the factory. A spokeswoman didn't elaborate on whether the decision was based on safety reasons. A spokeswoman for Loblaw said it was looking into the issue. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said it is 'working to understand the facts and will take appropriate action based on our findings.' She declined to elaborate."

Good morning, fellow political junkies. It's Day 9 of the partial federal government shutdown. Global financial markets at this point still appear to expect sanity to eventually prevail in the Washington fiscal standoff. We'll have to see if they're right.

The day's big news is expected to be President Obama's choice to head the Federal Reserve of the candidate thought to be his second choice since his first proved politically problematic.

Here are some of the more interesting politically related items that caught my eye this morning.

Economist Janet Yellen is President Obama's choice to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, succeeding Ben Bernanke, The Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath and Peter Nicholas report. If confirmed by the Senate, she would become the first woman to be the world's most powerful central banker. The bad news is she could also be the first U.S. Fed chief to have to pick up the pieces after a federal-government default on its obligations. Lawrence Summers, who was thought to be Obama's preferred candidate, won't have such worries, at least.

Some Senate Democrats are warning that the chamber's majority might be forced to change the rules to make it easier for the majority to advance a debt-ceiling raising bill to a floor vote if Republicans decide to filibuster it., Politico's Manu Raju and Burgess Everett report. That move would make the Senate's atmosphere even more toxic.

The vast majority of the federal government would remain closed if President Obama and Senate Democrats accepted the House Republicans' approach of reopening government in a piecemeal way, Derek Thompson vividly explains at The Atlantic.

Remember the immigration issue? It's kind of gotten lost amid the current fiscal fight. Supporters of an immigration overhaul want to make sure it's not forgotten, however. Hundreds demonstrated at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday with some being arrested, including several congressmen, reports NPR's Hansi Lo Wang.

It's easy to lose track of how many times, David Frum has stood athwart history to yell "stop" at his own Republican Party. His latest piece in The Daily Beast is a particularly good example of it.

Recruiting Democratic candidates to run for House seats in Republican districts has become relatively easier because of the government shutdown for which the GOP gets the greater share of the blame, Greg Sargent writes in the Washington Post's Plum Line.

Obama has a Kansas cousin with Tea Party leanings who plans to primary Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) reports Katrina Trinko in the The Corner blog at the National Review Online.

House members who workout in the private gym in the Capitol are being forced to reuse their towels because linen service is a casualty of the government shutdown, reports The Hill.

The latest House GOP gambit in the fiscal fight is ... wait for it ... a supercommittee.

But Republicans aren't calling it a supercommittee since that's the term for the failed panel that brought us the the sequester.

Instead, it's called the Bicameral Working Group on Deficit Reduction and Economic Growth. The special panel would have 20 members, evenly divided between the House and Senate, who would recommend a budget for fiscal 2014 (which began Oct. 1), and craft details of a new debt ceiling and spending cuts.

One problem with the idea: The proposal has practically no chance of passing in a Senate led by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

President Obama was also dismissive in his Tuesday press conference.

"Now, there is already a process in place called the budget committees that could come together right now — Democrats have been asking for 19 months to bring them together — make a determination how much should the government be spending next year," he said. "And that's a process that's worked reasonably well for the last 50 years. I don't know that we need to set up a new committee for a process like that to move forward."

The legislation is the House Republicans' attempt to codify as much as possible their request for negotiations with President Obama and Senate Democrats.

And when Senate Democrats consign it to the ever-growing pile of House GOP bills they've killed, Republicans can point to that as yet another example of Democratic intransigence.

"A president of the U.S. should provide leadership and that includes negotiating with people, even someone you disagree with. And that is the mark of a leader, and that is why we're here today," Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), the House Rules Committee chairman, said at a hearing considering the legislation.

What was odd about that was that nothing in the legislation even mentions the president, which Democrats at the hearing noted.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York, the committee's top Democrat, captured her colleagues' disdain for the idea.

"I expected better," she said. "Another supercommittee? For crying out loud. Look what happened to the last one. The last one just threw up its hands and said, 'We can't do another thing.' This is leadership?"

Well, yes, as the 14-term congresswoman knows better than most, in Washington, proposing a committee to solve tough problems does often pass for leadership.