Once upon a time, there was a clear set of choices that people made. Now there are so many choices of how to think, how to define ourselves.

This is like the gun you shoot at the beginning of the race or the bell that you ring at the beginning of a classroom discussion, .. This is the president saying, 'OK, we're going to get serious about this now. Congress is going to work on it. I'm going to put my political capital behind it.' .

The chamber went all-out saying this really matters to us.

This is a huge, huge thing he did. He is the person who had the guts to say we had to have a compromise. He gets the credit for the compromise.

For the most part these are hard working, family-oriented people who want to become Americans we should find a way for them to earn their way onto the right side of the law.

How do you solve the problem of illegal immigration without addressing the 11 million already here?

In spirit, the whole idea of the reform is for people like David Mendez, who are in essence hard-working Americans with roots in this country, so they can get on the right side of the law.

Their political judgment is that weighing in on the specifics is not the most effective strategy for them.

They are watching very carefully what's going on in Congress and I think they are prepared to encourage the right kind of program ... as it comes out of Congress. He understands he's going to have a big role to play in persuading the public that whatever the answer is, it isn't an amnesty.

It turns out some of those devilish details are giving people trouble now. And what looked like such a promising thing last week ... is turning out to be tough work.