From last night’s All Stars.

On Geithner:

I think what’s serious here is the fact that our banks are collapsing. Citicorp is crashing. We have record unemployment.
We have in Geithner a guy with amazing experience, extremely smart, who has been in every crisis over the weakness in 2008, all the rescues. He is a man who inspires confidence in our economy, which is what it is really lacking.
And to sink his nomination over what I think is a triviality is simply unserious. Our crisis is too strong, too big, and his is too much of an asset to deny him office over unpaid taxes, which in the end he refunded and repented.

On Bush’s legacy:

I think he will be remembered for three things. He decimated Al Qaeda. He turned Iraq from an enemy to an ally. And he established the tools combating the terrorism.
And the key element in that was the change of the idea about what our threat was. In the 90’s everyone looked at acts of terror as law enforcement issues, and he turned it into a matter of war.
And that’s why he instituted all of these elements–wiretapping, rendition, the interrogations and the detention without trial, which you have in war, and which you don’t have in peace. And that’s why it’s now under attack.
I hope Obama will continue, and understand that even though we are in a period of calm, the war remains, and he will not undo all of this infrastructure which has kept us safe for these seven years.