I want to bring in our senior political analyst David Gergen.
And, David, thank you for joining us. Petraeus today was confirmed by a vote of 99-0. Very clear he's got the support of the Senate and the Congress behind him. But when you take a look at what's happening on the ground in Afghanistan, a very different story.
We heard from Senator John McCain. And here's how he described it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Our operation in Kandahar is getting off to a slower and more difficult start than expected. The performance of the Afghan government over the past seven months is not as even or as rapid as we had hoped.
Some of our key allies plan to withdraw their forces soon. And it looks increasingly unlikely that NATO will meet its pledge of 10,000 troops.
None of this is to say that we are failing or that we will fail in Afghanistan. It just means that we need to give our strategy the necessary time to succeed.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: David, so when do you think Americans are going to start to see a change on the ground in Afghanistan? Is it going to happen any faster for General Petraeus?
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Suzanne, I do think we ought to pause for just a second over the fact that he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. That's a very strong sendoff for him.
You know, it often seems that in this Senate you couldn't get a unanimous vote in favor of Mother's Day. So for him to come out with 99-0 strengthens his hand in Kabul with Karzai. It strengthens his hand with NATO. It strengthens his hand in Pakistan.
And by the way, it strengthens his hand with the White House, too, because this is now -- you know, the president has now got a man who is very, very powerful and looked to almost in an iconic way heading up to this and he could -- he could really -- if he splits with the president on the withdrawal date, that gets to be very difficult.
But what that allows, Suzanne, is that he's going to move forward very rapidly, see if he can -- he's already moving forward on the diplomatic front flying off to Brussels right away. Interestingly he has invited the Ambassador Eikenberry to meet him there in Brussels and fly back with him to Kandahar showing that there's a united team now for the first time on the field.
All of that is good news but he's got to get results. And I think in his mind he probably thinks he has to get results by the end of the year.
MALVEAUX: Well, it was President Karzai, the Afghan President Karzai, who said -- who was very close to General Stanley McChrystal. He -- Karzai said that he wanted McChrystal to stay.
How do we expect that General Petraeus is going to deal with the Afghan government? What kind of relationship are we anticipating between those two men and even the officials?
GERGEN: Well, it was interesting. I had a chance to talk to General Petraeus last Friday and he told me right up front, I've already had a chance to talk to President Karzai twice. I want to establish a closer relationship with him. He had a third conversation with him just this week.
He intends to be as -- you know, to reach out to him and develop the kind of relationship McChrystal had but he's not going to take orders from Karzai. There was some indication, there were some hints that McChrystal was a little too deferential.
I don't think Petraeus is going to go in that way. He is -- he carries the complete support of the president and Karzai must know that unlike McChrystal who had a somewhat strained relationship with President Obama.
MALVEAUX: Right.
GERGEN: General Petraeus and President Obama have gotten very close.
MALVEAUX: All right. David Gergen, thank you so much.
GERGEN: Thank you.
MALVEAUX: There's heart-wrenching testimony on Capitol Hill. The widow of a killed oil worker tells lawmakers how the disaster has devastated her family and what she wants them to do about it. Plus, supermodel Naomi Campbell may be forced to do something she doesn't want to do -- testify at a war crimes trial about blood diamonds.
Transcript from THE SITUATION ROOM aired June 30,2010