There's an old saying that you can't open a new circus until the old circus leaves town. It was just inevitable that this is going to continue to hang over their heads because the investigation continues. The Libby-Rove-Cheney story continues to have legs, and it's going to continue to for some time. And the war still goes on.

What you're seeing in the East Wing is normal turnover, and what you're seeing in the West Wing is abnormal. It's an aberration to have a team stay as long as this one has.

When he hung up on Nancy Reagan, that's when he crossed his final threshold.

I don't have any problem with a reporter or a news person who says the President is uninformed on this issue or that issue. I don't think any of us would challenge that. I do have a problem with the singular focus on this, as if that's the only standard by which we ought to judge a president. What we learned in the last administration was how little having an encyclopedic grasp of all the facts has to do with governing.

A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.

Win or lose, he realized that it was going to be very difficult to govern and that the better part of valor was to step aside.