From last night’s All Stars.

On Sen. Judd Gregg’s withdrawal as Commerce Secretary nominee:

Well, he has been saying it wasn’t the census, but I’m not sure I believe him. That was a real humiliation.
After all, commerce has only two things to be said for it. One is it runs the census, which is one of the few jobs the constitution gives the government. The constitution is all about the stuff that the Congress ought not, should not, or shall not do.
And the other nifty thing about that commerce is that it has aquarium in the headquarters in Washington. Once they took away the census, he was going to end up feeding fish in the aquarium.
It was a complete embarrassment and a humiliation, and I’m sure that was the main issue.
And, of course, on the stimulus, he is a budget hawk. And here he is teaming up with an administration with a stimulus that has spending completely out of control.
What I don’t understand is how Judd Gregg could have imagined that he could be a member of that team knowing what the Obama agenda was going to be. It isn’t as if the stimulus was a secret at the time he took the job.

On the stimulus bill as it nears passage:

The process is ugly. This is as ugly as sausage making gets in Washington. And there has been a lot of anger between the House and Senate Democrats over the way it was ultimately resolved.
But, look, in the end, the winner is Obama, and the reason is that in Washington, you win if you pass legislation, particularly something as huge, complex, especially sprawling, and ugly as this. If he can pass a bill as ugly as this, he’s strong, and he’s got momentum.
Now, he will be judged later on whether it worked. But I think in the end, even a year or two down the road, we’re never going to know if it worked, because it will be a minor element, with trillions thrown at the credit market, and also with tens of trillions that coarse through the markets every day.
So if the economy is strong in 2010, everybody will say it was the stimulus. It will be a victory. If it’s not, whether or not it had a negative effect, it will be a loss.
And what happens with this is Obama, as of now, as soon as he signs it, he takes ownership of the economy. He blames Bush for another three or six months, but after that it’s done. It’s all on him.