David Gergen

It's clear now that we have not just a financial crisis that's building up in this country but a political crisis.

Neither of these plans does that.

The president says he does not want a short-term deal. And I know personally that he feels very intensely about that.

The critical point is, as Moody's is warning, as Ben Bernanke warned today in Congress, the critical point is this country must not go into default on August 2nd.

The President and the -- and the leaders all have to come out of their corners and arrive at some sort of deal in the immediate future that averts a default on the national debt.

The President has -- believes very strongly, and I have this on excellent authority today he believes very strongly he can bring along Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, kicking and screaming, to be sure.

His politics for 2012 is becoming apparent. He wants to win the independent vote. He does that by getting the big deal. But he needs to cut entitlements: Medicare and Social Security to get there.

I'm sorry. Just let's get -- factually, the administration has never set four dates and said it's -- we're going to have real consequences if we don't hit this date.

If he really were truly near an agreement, I imagine he would have dropped all those snide comments about Republicans.

It certainly suggests that the mode -- the tone the President set today is a -- is a tone set by someone who thinks that talks are near collapse or not going anywhere and he's trying to scold the Republicans into action.

Every major economist, every major financial institution -- the International Monetary Fund today issued a report saying there's going to be a severe shock to the economy nationally and internationally if we don't -- if we go into default.

I think it was a very good speech -- brought into focus his overall philosophy. And you have to say he promised as a candidate and early on in his presidency he would wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and try to do that…

Well, he has. He has chosen I think what was aptly called earlier tonight a Goldilocks strategy. And that is, there's some people who want to move out rapidly, some people who want to stay a long time. I'm going to choose the middle of…

I happen to agree with them.

He would be far better to knock off Gadhafi quickly.

There is a split in the Republican Party now that is very, very unusual between the war hawks, the neo-conservatives if you would like to call them that -- and many of them signed that letter.

There's a war weariness in the land, after 10 years.

Romney the winner and Pawlenty, a missed opportunity.

I did think there were three winners tonight: Romney, who helped himself the most. Gingrich, who remained in the race. But Michele Bachmann, I thought, was the biggest surprise, because she was -- I don't think the country knew her well.

I think there are a lot of Democrats who would like to see him go away, not just this go away.

I think the real question now is, how many -- how many legs does the story itself have? How many women come forward? What do they have to say?

I think the next three or four days are pretty crucial for this. If he gets by, if this storm passes, he could survive. I doubt it. I do think that there is a political aspect to this, Anderson, and that is there are an awful lot of…

There are an awful lot of Democrats who are mad at him because they thought they were on the offensive over Medicare and the Ryan plan.

I think the president and John Boehner both need to be involved with this. I think we need a very intensive set of negotiations between now and the deadline on this debt ceiling.

I think the distrust and the rifts are growing deeper. The president is now off and running on his campaign and he's using very partisan rhetoric that is angering the Republicans, stirring up his base.