David Gergen

Had this gone down -- and last night looked like it could go down in the Senate. He would have started out his presidency in a very weakened position.

To him, the central story of his presidency is that of the threat of terrorism coming in 9/11 and that he protected the homeland over these last seven years.

This reflects fundamentally the failures of the Bush administration in the way they carried out the first half of it.

If they vote this down, that will be a blow for -- against Barack Obama on the eve of his inauguration, something that would be, have been unbelievable only a few weeks ago.

It shows the perils of trying to govern before you actually take the oath of office and before you have your team in place.

This veto threat, he has got the high cards here. The Democrats are not going to let the financial community collapse at this point.

I think it says it is going to be a very messy process, but I think Obama's likely to prevail.

Underneath this comity, this period of good feelings between the two, there are going to be sharp departures under the Obama administration from what the Bush administration was doing.

Underneath this comedy, this sort of -- this period of good feelings between the two, there are going to be sharp departures under the Obama administration from what the Bush administration was doing.

I think that the -- they were a little surprised in the Obama camp that people in the Congress said they would get this done by January 20.

I think it's laughable. And the -- what's most interesting and what's most important to see in this impeachment that has come forward now is it came out of committee unanimously.

We support you, we want a stimulus package, but we want to be at the table, and we want a voice in this.

President-elect Obama saying today that he's basically growing impatient over political posturing by members of Congress about the stimulus plan.

This guy's nuts, he's crazy.

Listen, I think everybody -- all the economists agree that only the government can now do this, that the Federal Reserve has exhausted its remedies.

The casualty out of all of this really may be his other plans. I don't know where -- when he gets this done, as I think he will, how does he then pay for health care reform long-term?

The issue here is not whether we can stop a recession. The issue is whether we can stop a recession from going much deeper and much longer.

Listen, I think everybody, all the economists agree that only the government can now do this. That the Federal Reserve has exhausted its remedies, it can't do very much, it's always working, but it can't lower interest rates very much when…

So, I think the politics are becoming much more treacherous for Barack Obama.

There's zero evidence that anybody around Obama, or Obama himself, even knew that there was this kind of horse-trading going on for a Senate seat for money or favors of one sort and another.

This is -- I still continue to think this is a great ado about very little.

That's a darn good question, Erica and pretty soon they're going to have to have some standards or principles by which to judge this.

There's zero evidence that anybody around Obama or Obama himself even knew that there was this kind of horse trading going on for the senate seat for money or favors of one sort or another.

That's what comes with being -- you know, when people begin to think, you're Obama, you can change everything, that's what he's got to worry about.

That's exactly -- when he -- when he starts walking -- if he gets out of his car on Pennsylvania Avenue on inaugural day, and just starts walking along, and they haven't taken huge precautions, just think what could happen.