You won, but at a price, as some of the things you said were better left unsaid. Even more important, the campaign did not prepare the public for the hard times to come.
The good news is that many of the arrows in Iraq are finally pointing in the right direction and it will not dominate your presidency. The bad news is that you know you are in for a rough ride when Iraq is the good news.
This is a sobering moment in American history. Some 21st-century version of the fireside chat is called for. My reading of things is that the American people are ready to be leveled with.
