I think John McCain's biggest problem is, he always looks angry.

If Barack Obama wins Iowa or is even very close in Iowa, I think a lot of independents are going to go Democrat.

The American people are going to give the president a second look here, in his sixth year, because he's engineering these changes. He needs the country to give him a second look.

It would have been better if the vice president and/or his staff had come out last Saturday night or first thing Sunday morning and announced it.

There is no question this has been a successful mission. This, too, was a successful military operation. A tremendous success. A successful operation. The Iraqi regime is no more. Al Qaeda have been severely diminished. The threat is no…

Well, that's an age-old issue for the reporters. And I happen to think the White House reporters are plenty capable, plenty tough, and they do their jobs.

I've always worked in the government basically since college and now I'm enjoying a quieter life and a life in the private sector.

Yes, it is. And I think the real issue is does he take questions from the press frequently? The answer to that is yes. He regularly -- two, three, four days a week -- takes questions from the press pool three, four, five questions at a…

We've reached an impasse between the media and the government.

The fewest of any modern president.

Well, I think there still is a purpose to it, absolutely.

Every time his approval in Iraq went down, it was the headline. Now it's gone up. It was a part of the story, but why wasn't that the headline?

The biggest problem isn't political bias, which you do think is a problem. It's a bias for conflict.

I think that's a little overdone, because as I said, I think half of the briefing people ask questions that I can't answer or shouldn't answer.

I think so. And I think frankly the reason for that is we all get along.

The fact of the matter is we're still in a war and not everything about the war is known, but make no mistake, as I said earlier, we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is…

Otherwise, Fleischer says, chances are more of the story will be about reaction to the president's environmental announcement than the substantive reasons why the president did it.