Stephen J. Hadley: “We need to show that our politics can actually, on a bipartisan basis, solve some of the problems we face.”

We have to have a robust economy, we need to show that our politics can work and solve our social problems.

President Bush early on in his administration said that the U.S. policy of trying to purchase stability at the price of supporting these authoritarian regimes was a bad bargain; that authoritarian regimes are not stable, and they needed to…

We need to put pressure on President Karzai but really to encourage all aspects of the Afghan system to put pressure on Karzai and the Parliament to get this legislation enacted and to get the people appointed.

I think it is important both as a symbol of a national commitment to deal with this problem, but it is also important to rebalance a little bit this relationship between the Congress and the President.