I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn't. Hey, it made me a better leader: you have to take a lot of people's needs into account; you have to look down the road. Trying to negotiate getting a couple of kids to watch the same TV show requires serious diplomacy.

There is an institutional cynicism that causes reporters to question everything the President says, and the motives of everything the President and his Administration try to accomplish.

Part of Obama's persona is self-reliance. He's calm; he's cool; he's self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton's sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism.

I was supposed to be authoritative, but at the same time had to be likeable, a quality that is a bonus, not a requirement, for men in the same position.

Obama has made America cool again - and more than that, he's made his own brand arguably the most powerful the world has ever known.

My job is to be a spokesman - the spokesman, I suppose - for the President, for the White House, to do the daily briefings, to manage the press corps in terms of travel, day-to-day needs, access, interviews, all those issues.

It isn't fate but fecklessness that has shoved Sarah Palin to the sidelines of national politics. The real tragedy is that she's taken a lot of other serious Republican women with her.