David Gergen

I think it was extraordinary how many times she sort of came back from being, you know, 'The Perils of Pauline.'

I think both candidates right now are sort of far short of convincing voters that they have the right remedies for the economy.

Barack Obama is missing some tricks and not taking advantage of the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves.

John McCain is doing remarkably well in these national surveys. He is in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama in a race ordinarily the Democrats would win by five, maybe and probably by ten points.

He needs to get seriously into this too. But I think John McCain was very smart today to jump right into this about the unemployment and express his concern.

What he wants to do is to let this vice-presidential question essentially float to the back burner. He needs to take charge not by spending the summer worrying about who's going to be his vice president, but by laying out a clear framework…

I think she needs to make it extremely clear that she's an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama and enthusiastic supporter of the Democrats winning the White House.

But I think the first and most important decision is this vice-presidential decision, and Barack Obama was absolutely right today. This is the most important decision he has to make before the election.

I think he just told Candy Crowley in his interview today, this is a deliberative process.

This is a very, very important meeting.

It's a very significant meeting.

Very important meeting, reassuring the Democrats. The fact that it was not more stage-managed suggests to me they really did want to keep it quite private, and they weren't quite certain going in whether it would be a cordial meeting.

She's trying to move to make it his decision, and he's taking charge of the party.

This is the most important decision he has to make before the election.

She has -- I think that was very wise of her today, after talking to a variety of people, to recognize what she did on Tuesday night and the way her supporters have been trying to pressure him is backfiring.

They have been together for a year-and-a-half as equals, indeed, with Hillary Clinton probably looking at Barack Obama as, you know, the upstart.

This is a very significant meeting.

He's going to be held to a higher standard.

John McCain has well -- has used his time well in the last few weeks to start laying out an agenda for what a McCain presidency would look like.

Barack Obama ought to be concerned. His people ought to be concerned. We spent the first few minutes tonight talking about Hillary Clinton how he should respond to Hillary Clinton.

It's time for Barack Obama to take charge of some of this process.

I think this has been coming for a long time. She has been thinking about this for a long time.

John McCain is still running a very competitive race.

But it makes his campaign much harder. He's got a harder hill to climb. He needs to move on now, and get organized. John McCain can spend 100 percent of his time --

The economy and foreign policy, especially Iraq, are going to be sort of overwhelming sweeping issues in this.