"We will get in a rocket and fly around the moon if that is what it takes to get everybody together and get an agreement."
-- White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on President Obama's proposed health-care reforms. While Gibbs opted for sarcasm, the President took the philosophical route, recalling landmark social reforms. "These struggles always boil down to a contest between hope and fear," he said. "That was true in the debate over Social Security, when F.D.R. was accused of being a socialist. That was true when J.F.K. and Lyndon Johnson tried to pass Medicare. And it's true in this debate today." My take? It's just the first episode of a new reality show: "Extreme Makeover, Government Edition." --Jessica Shambora
"When he's not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy."
-- Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., after the "beer summit" with Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department, Vice President Biden and President Obama. Race relations have taken center stage ever since Sgt. Crowley arrested Prof. Gates for disorderly conduct in his own home last week. Of the moniker given to the gathering, the President called it MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Jul 31, 2009 2:56 AM ET
"I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences."
-- Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, in a press conference following the announcement of her nomination Tuesday. The daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants, Sotomayor was born in the Bronx and grew up in a housing project near Yankee Stadium. After her father passed away when she was MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - May 26, 2009 6:07 PM ET
"We need to simplify a monstrous tax code that is far too complicated for most Americans to understand, but just complicated enough for the insiders who know how to game the system."
-- President Barack Obama in a speech at the White House on Wednesday. The first couple paid about $855,000 in federal taxes and would have gotten $26,000 back, but applied the amount to their 2009 income taxes instead. Happy MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 15, 2009 7:10 PM ET
"Why didn't the waters part, the sun shine and all the ills of the world disappear because President Obama came to Europe? That wasn't our expectation. That'll take at least a few weeks."
--White House senior adviser David Axelrod, in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. As Axelrod quips, repairing U.S. relations with Europe won't happen overnight, but Obama got off on the right foot--helped no doubt by his rock-star status on the MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 8, 2009 5:51 PM ET
"The hardest thing about the job is staying focused," President Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes Sunday night.
Are you feeling like the President these days? Unfocused? Maybe fatally so? We're living in an age of "global A.D.D.," as David Brooks, the New York Times op-ed writer said in his column last Friday. Brooks criticizes President Obama for attempting to tackle the "four most complicated problems facing the nation--health care, MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 24, 2009 1:55 PM ET
Warren Buffett hosted CNBC's Squawk Box this morning and had this to say about the notion, held by many Democrats, that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste:
"I don't think anybody on December 7 [1941] would have said, 'A war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we're going to ram through a whole bunch of things and expect the other party to unite behind us on the MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 9, 2009 5:07 PM ET
Barack Obama's hair is turning gray. The New York Times reported the other day that a President typically ages two years for every year in the job. Thank goodness our new President is only 47 years old. The way things are going right now, I suspect he'll age twice as fast as other Presidents.
We learned this week that things are worse than we thought. General Electric (GE) CEO Jeff Immelt, MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 6, 2009 1:02 PM ET
"We must usher in a new era of responsibility...and begin the hard work of bringing new levels of honesty and fairness to our government."
- President Obama, in his opening letter in the new U.S. government budget. Obama is showing himself to be a brand-builder. Not only does the cover of his budget document come with a high-minded title: A New Era of Responsibility--Renewing America's Promise. (Last year, President Bush's budget MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 27, 2009 7:02 PM ET
Are you keeping the faith? Your answer probably depends on whether you have the right leader to look up to.
I've been thinking about leadership a lot lately. For one thing, I read on the front page of today's New York Times that a remarkable portion of America believes in our new president. Sixty-three percent of Americans approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job, according to a new MORE
Patricia Sellers - Feb 24, 2009 1:30 PM ET
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Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
