Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Back in junior high gym class when wrestling was on the agenda, there was no more frightening foe than the hulking Gooch McFeeney. You knew from the moment that he lumbered to the mat, dropped the beef shank he’d been gnawing on, and squinted his grizzly bear eyes, that you had no chance of winning.

But by running around, shrieking like a cheerleader every time he landed a hairy paw, and frantically squirming at least one shoulder into the air each time he went for the pin, you could delay losing for quite a while. Go on long enough, Gooch would tire, and maybe you would not have to lose at all.

It is a peculiar characteristic of sports, chess, and arguments with your spouse, that winning is much tougher than merely not losing. “Winning” requires aggressive, focused, and tenacious effort. “Not losing” just requires holding on.

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Ed Rollins
CNN Senior Political Contributor

After months of review, President Obama has made a decision that will not please the base of his party. The majority of Democrats in Congress are opposed to expanding or prolonging the war in Afghanistan. Many Americans share their concern.

This decision to send 30,000 additional troops into combat, which I support, will be second-guessed for the rest of his presidency. And if it doesn't go well, it may cost him his presidency.

For a man who began his campaign as the "anti-war" candidate, this had to be a gut-wrenching decision. Critics will argue President Obama should have learned the lessons of Vietnam and remembered how that war destroyed Lyndon Johnson's presidency .

President Obama was only in elementary school during that period, but many of the leaders in Congress grew up as part of the George McGovern wing of the Democratic Party. The anti-war movement was their introduction to political activism. They are furious that their president is continuing the Bush war effort. Many will call it folly, and some will call it reckless. I call it leadership.

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Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

Like a proverbial swarm of locusts, book buyers are descending on stores coast-to-coast to devour endless stacks of a new publication. Talk and news shows are devoting so many hours to discussing the author, even John Grisham might be jealous. And the subject of all this literary wonder: Sarah Palin.

The ubiquitous former governor of Alaska is once again blasting over the American political landscape, this time astride her super-charged snowmobile of a memoir, “Going Rogue.” The actual sales figures are changing by the hour, so let’s just say she moving more paper than Dwight Schrute. Harper Collins reportedly planned to print 1.5 million copies in the first run, and industry insiders say they’ve rarely seen such pre-release demand for a non-fiction book. Although, having done some fact-checking, I must say putting it into the non-fiction category may be a stretch.

Anyway, with her custom bus rumbling from one town to the next for these Take-Back-America tent revivals, it’s like a Shania Twain concert tour without the band.

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David Gergen | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Senior Political Analyst

Barack Obama has recently been reading up on the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Coming home from China, he might well focus on Kennedy’s first summit overseas with the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev. Indeed, we all could learn from that episode.

Like Obama, Kennedy came into office as an inspiring figure, an idealist who stirred hopes for the future and yet was inexperienced in the exercise of power. At the time, the Soviet Union was a rising nation that was threatening the global leadership of the United States.

In the fall of his first year in office, Kennedy went to Europe where he was welcomed grandly until he arrived in Vienna to sit down with Khrushchev. Kennedy, the idealist, thought that his charm and his appeals to reason would win over the Soviet leader. Instead, Khrushchev bullied him unmercifully and the men were unable to agree on anything of substance. Polite reasoning went nowhere.

According to Kennedy biographer Richard Reeves, Khruschev left the meeting telling associates, “He’s very young… not strong enough. Too intelligent and too weak.” Khrushchev concluded that he could push Kennedy around and started causing mischief from Berlin to Cuba.

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The Senate is set to begin debating the contentious health care reform bill.

Ed Hornick
CNN

The Senate is about to embark on what could be the showdown of the year as top Democrats work to push through sweeping health care legislation.

The legislative chamber, however, is no stranger to history-changing debate. Lawmakers need to look no further than their predecessors to see how it's done.

Iraq

In 1991, Congress voted for the use of military force towards Iraq after the Saddam Hussein-led country went to war with Kuwait.

The action was the first time Congress voted for going to war since the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, which officially began U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Senate vote in 1991, however, was much closer than the vote over Vietnam, illustrating a deep divide over whether to get involved.

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Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

So many different numbers are being tossed about on the subject of unemployment; if you spend even a day trying to sort them out you can wind up feeling like Alice in Wonderland; only this time she’s tumbled down into an unemployment line where nothing makes sense.

Here is the White House crew talking about all the jobs that they’ve “created or saved” with the stimulus. The economy is getting better, but joblessness is getting worse. Initial benefits claims are up, then they are down. The Labor Department is issuing a river of reports on jobs lost, gained, outsourced, insourced, retro-fitted, repainted, fertilized, pruned, poached in a white wine sauce, you name it. Cue the Mad Hatter. It’s no wonder whacky tea parties are breaking out across the land.

Take it easy. Having traveled at great peril through the looking glass into the surreal land of economists, I have emerged with the grail; the only number you really need to know.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is doing everything in her power to get health care reform passed

Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst

The story so far: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does everything in her power to get health care reform passed by keeping her Democratic caucus together.

She keeps liberals by insisting on a public option. She works on fiscal moderates by re-jiggering it. She works on lowering the cost of the package. She pays for it by taxing millionaire couples, appealing to the class-warfare crowd.

And to keep the Catholic bishops (and their moderate allies) on board, she keeps severe restrictions on paying for abortion in the measure. The liberals, of course, threaten to bolt - but it remains in the final package.

This is not legislating; it's whack-a-mole.

The challenge is simply to try and keep your unruly team in line, and maybe pick up a stray vote or two from the opposition. If you succeed, it's not about bipartisanship. It's just salesmanship.

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Program Note: Don't miss Anderson's conversation with the book's authors Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe tonight. AC360° 10 p.m. ET.

Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe
'Sarah from Alaska'

Introduction: Lights Out

IN A CONDOMINIUM SUITE at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin read over the election night victory speech that she would never have the chance to deliver. Thank you all so much. And thank you, America, for the great responsibility that you have given to President-elect John S. McCain.

It was just minutes before the stirring moment when the official results would begin to trickle in, but as the sun descended toward the desert horizon, her fatigue must have been crushing. Palin’s two months on the trail had been not just physically exhausting but mentally draining. This short, strange trip had tested her in ways that might have broken even the most hardened political pro, and she had suffered more than her fair share of setbacks and embarrassments.

Still, it was Palin’s gripping story and alluring personality that had breathed life into a once flatlining campaign. Her addition to the ticket had sparked a flood of donations, standing-room only crowds at rallies, and a surge in the polls for the Republican ticket. But along with Palin’s many positive contributions to the campaign had come as many ruinous malfunctions. In the final hours of this frenzied voyage, she would discover just how expendable she had become, as the McCain campaign was literally about to turn the lights out on her.

How had she skyrocketed so quickly into the stratosphere of American politics? Who had really been at fault for her many public stumbles? And what was it about Sarah Palin that drew such passion from both her fans and her foes? Even with the benefit of the thousands of hours of media attention that had been devoted to her candidacy, the heat of the moment did not afford the perspective for anyone to answer these questions adequately, least of all the candidate herself. On this last night of the campaign, Palin remained focused on the momentous judgment that the American people were about to deliver.

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Tea Party activists hit the Hill, arrested outside Pelosi's office.

Tom Foreman | BIO
AC360° Correspondent

If there is one thing that unites Democratic and Republican elites in DC, beyond of course a deep disdain for ethics rules, it is a fundamental inability to understand independent voters. The most important trend worth watching in the election this week was the behavior of the independents, and it should have sent campaign gurus running into bunkers with armloads of canned goods.

Barack Obama was swept to victory by a shift of moderate and independent voters to the Democratic side one year ago. But this week, in Virginia and New Jersey, his independent horsepower bolted from the barn. Sixty percent or more, in each place, voted Republican.

The GOP crowed over their new found friends, and Dems quietly cursed the loss. But both parties remain largely blind to what is really happening. The independents who voted for Barack Obama did so because they believed he would make a good stab at fixing the economy. But now, with the deficit still soaring, mortgages still failing, and unemployment lines still growing, they are on the move again.

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Republican Chris Christie defeated Jon Corzine in New Jersey's gubernatorial election on Tuesday.

David Gewirtz | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Editor-in-Chief, ZATZ Publishing

I think it's time I weighed in on the New Jersey election results. Some in the GOP (Chairman Michael Steele, for example) are claiming "historic" victories. Others, most notably Democrat Nancy Pelosi, are doing their level best to completely ignore the gubernatorial election results. That's right, Nancy. If you close your eyes, it never happened.

The punditocracy is going to town over this. First, most of us didn't even realize we were going to get the gift of politics until we turned on our TVs last night. It's like finding a post-season All Stars game on your TiVo when you didn't even know one was scheduled to record.

Talking heads. Pontification. Spin. It's enough to make a guy geek out all giddy with delight.

Back to New Jersey. First off, I'm a Jersey boy. I grew up in the Garden State and lived there on and off until just a few years ago, when my love for my wife (and her desire to live somewhere without winter) overwhelmed my deep connection with my native soil.

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