Shock, confusion, fear, anger, grief, and defiance. On Sept. 11, 2001, and for the three days following the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, President George W. Bush led with raw emotion that reflected the public's whipsawing stages of acceptance.

Say what you want to say about the rest of his presidency, including his tone-deaf response to Katrina and a war waged in Iraq on false pretenses, Bush connected with Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 because he looked as frail and unforgiving as we felt.

Obama still has work to do with the vision thing. Convincing voters that he has a credible, practical plan to turn the nation around is a process, not a speech.

The problem, gentlemen, is that Obama is right: The promise of upward mobility is dying in America, and no amount of political demagoguery will fix it.

For a man who has compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt and the nation's challenges to those of the Gilded Age, Obama put forward a tepid agenda.

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.

White House operatives went to great lengths to show Obama shifting focus from wars abroad to domestic issues at home.

President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?

Most political journalists come to Washington because they're snappy writers, big thinkers, or news breakers. Me? My ticket to the big leagues had little to do with talent. It was mostly about the governor I was covering, Bill Clinton.

AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton, his family, friends, and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started.

Election night is the easiest time to act like a grownup.

Most Tea Party activists consider Obama a big-spending liberal. Some even question his eligibility to be president.

Barack Obama may have found the answer to his biggest rhetorical challenge: When millions of voters are unemployed or underemployed, how does a president simultaneously sound realistic and optimistic?

The deck is stacked against Obama.

I've been leading newsrooms for a while now and it's been an honor serving as Editor in Chief of N.J., but I really think that my best shot at moving the needle in politics is by getting close to it - by reading, reporting, tweeting and writing.

I've worked with Bette Davis, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda. Here's the thing they all have in common: They all, even in their 70s, worked a little harder than everyone else.

When you're young and you're striving, it's all uphill, and it's easier to climb. Then, when you get and look around, you sort of say, 'Wow, the altitude's kinda thin up here!'

I think it's in our nature to try to get beyond that next horizon. I think that when we, as a species, are scratching that itch, we're actually following an evolutionary compulsion that is wired into us. I think good things come of it.

I would do a documentary about Jay-Z. Yes, I would.

I love leaving the door open to good ideas. I love the collaborative swirl. I get charged by problem-solving, usually under some kind of stress - the sun is going down, and we have eight minutes, and we have to solve it. Great things come out of it.

I have a grandson who's both really interested in art and all things mechanical, so I think he'll get a huge kick out of 'Apollo 13' someday. And I think my granddaughters will enjoy 'Splash.'

I didn't really listen to music when I was doing homework or when I - when I work on a script. I tend to drift to NPR and news.

I do really like serio-comic movies that treat real difficulties in a real way.

It was always my dream to be a director. A lot of it had to do with controlling my own destiny, because as a young actor you feel at everyone's disposal. But I wanted to become a leader in the business.

I don't look ahead to the future as a vast, endless one. I've begun to feel the calendar pages turning.

When 'Apollo 13' appeared as an opportunity and I began to tackle that in as authentic a way as I possibly could, I really became enthralled by the philosophical side of space travel and why we need to explore - what it means to us here on Earth - all of those things. I became a huge proponent.

Imagine if the people who have lived and learned still had the vitality to act upon the hard learned lessons - and not just share in a conversation, but lead.

There's something rare and wonderful that's very particular to television, and it's when a great cast meets a great show runner/creator with the right set of characters to play. That's what happened with 'Arrested Development.' It happens every so often, but all too rarely on TV.

For my 10th birthday, what I wanted was Beatle boots and a Beatle wig. My parents couldn't find Beatle boots, but down at the dime store, Woolworths or someplace, they found a Beatle wig!

There are creative benefits to getting older.

I was a Beach Boys guy, but I was won over. In '64, as the radio stations were creating this duel between The Beatles and The Beach Boys, I slowly but surely got won over by the Mop Tops.

I used to feel that I had to be dictatorial in order to be respected, but after I did a couple of TV movies, I began to see that authority came with the job. So I began to relax and let more people into the process, and my work really improved.

The hardest thing which I've experienced is calling up my father, Rance Howard, who's a wonderful actor, and telling him I've had to cut him out of the movie, which I've had to do twice. That's a lump-in-the-throat phone call.

Richard Dreyfuss, when we were doing 'American Graffiti,' was pumping me to vote for McGovern. But I think I wound up going for Nixon. I thought he could get us out of the Vietnam War quickly. Ha.

I always think of the good comebacks on the car ride home.

With 'Apollo 13,' I wasn't sure the genre would work, because space films hadn't done that well.

What I love about DVD is that the quality is good.

Television, particularly as it becomes more and more serialised, comedies no longer have to tie the stories up neatly within 20-plus minutes. 'Arrested Development' had evolving storylines, as did both versions of 'The Office.' We're seeing that more and more. That allows it to be really, whatever the tone, almost literary.

Unlike the twisters he famously chased in the movies, Bill Paxton was the kind of force of nature you ran toward and never away from.

Instead of candidates hiring people, like yours truly, to create campaign media that works on both conscious and subconscious levels to sway the voting public, what if all TV ads were, by law, only allowed to feature the candidate, with, say, the American flag as the backdrop, alone, speaking directly to the camera?

Nina Gold is a fantastic casting director. She's doing the new 'Star Wars' movies, but she also does 'Game of Thrones' and many of the Working Title movies, and she did 'Rush.'

I think it gets overused and tossed around in ways that aren't true. Every impressive achievement is not genius.

I don't think there is a single character in 'The Graduate' that is not a phony, to one degree or another, except Benjamin and Elaine, and only in the scenes when they are alone together.

Even when you're 22 and you feel immortal, you know in your heart you're not.

I'm lucky in a lot of ways. And in my family life, my home life, is where I count myself the luckiest.

I never wanted to be a brand director. I didn't want that kind of stamp. I wanted to be more like Pacino or Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep or De Niro - you know, a chameleon as a storyteller - because I love all kinds of movies.

I have very close friends who are very devout Catholics, and I talked to them before the 'Da Vinci Code,' and it was very difficult for them, but I talked to them before 'Angels and Demons,' and they said the scandal, abuse of power and violence was part of church history, which you can read about in the Vatican bookstore.

If I had to choose between a great acting job and a good directing job, I'd choose the directing job.

There was a combination of shyness and just fear of looking stupid that kept me out of a lot of interesting creative conversations that I could have had at an early age.

Can you imagine the first time they figured out how to mechanically raise somebody up through the stage and make them appear, or drop them down on a rope or a wire? It blew everybody's minds, I'm sure.