I thought David Axelrod struck just the right note of feistiness with Chris Wallace yesterday, including responses to his gotcha questions.

Axelrod threw back at Wallace his own previous barbs about Obama when the subject of the Paul Ryan budget came up. "You talk about hope, I guess your hope is that (closing of tax loopholes) will be forthcoming some time in the future. But the fact is we haven't heard them."

In response to Wallace's claim that revenues from Obama's proposed "Buffett Rule" would pay for the deficit for only 17 days, Axelrod pointed out that Mitt Romney says programs that are a lot less costly need to be cut because of the deficit. Also, I'm not sure what Obama remarks Wallace was citing as "proof" that Obama had claimed the Buffett Rule would solve the deficit problem but it's pretty clear from his 2012 State of the Union that Obama thinks of it as one part of a deficit-reducing plan.

Wallace asked, "If the president feels so strongly about tax fairness, is he going to contribute money to the Treasury... to help with the deficit?" Axelrod told him, "Listen, that's not the way we operate our tax system, OK? We don't run bake sales. It's not about volunteerism."