David Gergen

Let's do the best we can to withdraw honorably, and also try to preserve the region from a civil war, or across a region.

He wants to believe we're winning.

The president is likely to look toward the military recommendations, which are coming in, in the next two weeks, and choose those over the Baker-Hamilton commission.

I think it is a repudiation.

The best politics is good policy.

I think it is highlighting those mistakes.

The policy in Iraq is failing. The policy in the Middle East is failing. The president cannot walk away from those conclusions.

The policy is failing; we're in a grave situation; it could very easily descend into catastrophe.

I think that puts enormous pressure on the presidency. You know, we're going to have to do it a another way, a different way.

They could not put a timetable in because they knew the president had already declared publicly and repeatedly that he would not accept a timetable.

I think this is just a very bad place. Somebody -- some adult supervision is needed here to put a stop to this hemorrhaging, and see if you can't bring this together, and try to find a way out that does not -- is not a catastrophe.

I think it's important to note that the president himself, in the last couple of days, while he has been in your neighborhood out there in eastern Europe, and in the Jordan area, has been saying he's not -- he does not intend to enter into…

I think it's going to be received by a lot of people as too middle of the road, not a clear way out on the military side.

It was a huge embarrassment.

It seems to me almost impossible now for the president to come out of a meeting with Mr. Maliki in the next few hours and say with a straight face, we're now planning to do these three things to help this government, when the government…

Of course we believe in withdrawal. There's no timetable here. And we'll do it when the mission is completed.

There's not much you can do. ... the second terms are always worse than first terms. And boy, is George W. Bush proving that one.

Where he does retain power is not as a domestic president, but as an international commander in chief.

Absolutely. It's turned what looked like last night into a dramatic victory for Democrats into an historic victory for Democrats.

Now that they have the Senate, apparently, they have a lot more power together with the House and the Senate to push.

The Democrats got entrusted with a lot of power, and in 1994, Newt Gingrich and company came in. It was a cleansing election. This was another cleansing election.

That's a big deal to have Joe Biden in there.

The bigger question to me right now, is the president seriously interested in working with the Democrats?

That's right. That's fundamentally the choice. Do you escalate in order to try to secure it, give it one more big try.

We're in a moment of real political high drama in the United States.