Nearly losing my life made me want to live my life.

Banks are slowly but surely lending again, and never again will taxpayers foot the bill for Wall Street’s excesses. In case we forgot, that was the change we believed in. That was the change we fought for. That was the change President Obama delivered.

I still believe the Lewinsky investigation was way off from the focus of what Whitewater was, which turned out to be nothing at the end of the process. And I think that there were people who were determined as political opponents to not allow his presidency to succeed.

Counting the numbers of troops is not going to define our success here.There is no military success, ultimately, to Afghanistan. The Afghans themselves are going to define what happens here. And we have to convince ourselves that we have a strategy in place that empowers them to do that and that is realistic in what our expectations are from them and on what schedule.

We have come a long way and we have a little further to go.

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.

Things happened there that I don't think are the finest hours for anybody, whether it was a journalist, the legal system or, in that case of the political system, who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.