'Rope-a-dope': Sen. McCain's reference was to heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali's successful 1974 strategy of stretching out his fight against George Foreman, by feigning weakness in order to exhaust the older fighter over the long-term Senator John McCain today said he fears that President Obama is a victim of a 'game of rope-a-dope' being played by Russia's Vladimir Putin 'as the slaughter goes on'. McCain, who has alternated between supporting Obama's course and publicly lamenting its weakness, spoke out after the president's landmark national address last night in which he agreed to bow to Russian plans to broker a handover of Syria's chemical weapons.
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Fears of delay tactics sweep Capitol Hill as Congress learns how long a Russian-brokered deal with Syria will take to unfold
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'I think if you were sitting in Putin's seat, you would feel pretty good today,' Sen. John McCain said Wednesday
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President Obama 'all but guaranteed' with his Tuesday night speech, said one Hill aide, 'that Putin will think he has a really long leash'
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'The U.S. will see its own regime change in 2017,' said another congressional staffer, 'and odds are Assad will still be in power then'
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'This will take some time,' admitted Obama's spokesman, 'but we also are not interested in delaying tactics' 
'I have, therefore, asked the leaders of @placeholder to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path.' 
In the question above, the "@placeholder" stands for
Congress
The question refers to a tweet which mentions "the leaders of @placeholder". The term "@" is used in Twitter when the user wants to mention other people. It can be seen from this context that members of Congress come together for some discussion related to Syria and President Obama's role in it, as was evident by his speech delivered on September 10th 2013. 
However, there are no clues about whether or not these discussions were successful but they do give an indication regarding what went through their minds. This would have been discussed further with others via tweets (a popular social networking site) where one person mentioned something about President Obama having asked ""Congress"" (""leaders of placeholder"") to postpone voting procedures while diplomatic relations between Russia and United States remained intact.  


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