As individuals, we will be judged in our lives by the totality of our actions. Not one thing will stand out. And I think that's how we get judged by our colleagues and that's how we get judged by the good lord.

Rather than doing the kind of fact-checking that normally goes with a story, you ran with certain stories for not wanting to get beat. There's a pressure that exists in your profession. I would be surprised in any honest exchange that you say that doesn't exist.

Everybody knows they're on the Obama team: There isn't vice presidential vs. presidential division, there's not a generational pull. People have internalized that this is a real moment in history.

And the last thing that I want to see us do is ask more and more of our troops [in Afghanistan ] without guaranteeing that we're providing more and more of what's necessary to make the mission successful.

When President Obama entered the White House, the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America's bravest, our men and women in uniform, were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.

Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that lands like a thud on the oval office desk?

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.