“The President showed his analytical mind....He was at his best intellectually. I thought it was a great example of how his mind works....What a mind he has, and I love his ability to do it on television. I love to think with him.”

“I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office. I mean, from visionary leader of a giant movement, now he’s got an executive position that he has to perform in, in a way.”

“Spock’s cool, analytical nature feels more fascinating and topical than ever now that we’ve put a sort of Vulcan in the White House. All through the election campaign, columnists compared President Obama’s unflappably logical demeanor and prominent ears with Mr. Spock’s....Like Obama, Spock is the product of a mixed marriage (actually, an interstellar mixed marriage), and he suffers blunt manifestations of prejudice as a result....”

CNN Senior Analyst David Gergen: “In terms of mastery of the issues, we have rarely had a President who is as well briefed and speaks in as articulate a way as this President does. He’s nuanced. He’s very complete....He’s taken it to a whole different level in the way he speaks about issues....”

Correspondent Jessica Yellin: “What he’s done tonight is shown that the Republicans have an enormous challenge going forward, because this man is tackling so many issues at once, and in such a capable way, that it leaves the Republicans unable to target any one issue.”

“People who brief him say he is able to game out scenarios before the experts in the room, even on foreign policy, national security and other issues in which he had relatively little expertise before running for president. Obama is approaching the issues as a game of ‘three-dimensional chess,’ said John O. Brennan, an assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism. ‘It’s not kinetic checkers....There are moves that are made on the chess board that really have implications, so the President is always looking at those dimensions of it.’”

Anchor Charles Gibson: “Our medical editor, Dr. Tim Johnson, was one of those attending today’s White House health care forum....”

Dr. Tim Johnson: “I have to tell you, Charlie, I was blown away by President Obama’s grasp of the subject, how he connected the dots, how he answered the questions without any script.”