One thing I've experienced and I feel really grateful for now that I'm on my way out is that I felt that the justices gave that back to me. I really did. You know, of course, you can have some sharp exchanges. That's the nature of the thing, and that's fine. But really in the main I felt like the tone from them was, "Yeah. We may not agree with you, but we're going to have a discussion about this." And it did.

Very quickly the lawyers in the Justice Department pulled together a set of recommendations about how we ought to defend the law as a constitutional matter. And it was the lawyers in the Justice Department who thought that it was important to include the tax power argument as part of it.

I did think Justice [Antony] Kennedy's opinion on Lawrence was critical to that because it really, what Lawrence in one sense was, of course, about consensual sex being something that the government can't regulate. But really in a more fundamental sense, what it was saying, "Look. Gay people are normal people, and they get to live normal lives. They're not criminals by virtue of the fact of being gay."

I'm arguing for progressive positions on behalf of a progressive administration in front of a court who, before Justice [Antonin] Scalia's death, had a conservative majority that was quite conservative, frankly.

People have got to make their best calls in what they think about a case when they're covering it. But I do think the lesson there, and I guess stating the obvious, that oral argument can as often send a false signal as an accurate signal about where the thing is going.

After a couple of years, I realized that this was actually true, that his gave me the ability to go to a different place and, hopefully, have a stronger impact.

I do a little bit of hand-holding on the big cases. You know, like health care, I'll call over and say, "Don't worry. We've got it under control. We have the best people working on it. We're on schedule. Stay calm." So, those kinds of things.