There are many instances in which those at the uppermost levels of the White House were feeling the President [Barack Obama] was not fully informed of the flow of events and, in some cases, where policies were going in the White House.

Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.

Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction.

Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.

If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again

The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot.

Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches.