DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Wolf, there are encouraging signs here early on, at least about process. The fact that both sides agreed today to meet every two weeks, that was a breakthrough and shows a seriousness of purpose. But the compromises so far are on process and not on substance, and so far there's been no indication of that.
And as to the president, King Abdullah of Jordan last night directly called for the president to play a very active role, and we know from sources that President Mubarak of Egypt very much wants the president to be right in the middle of this, and it looks like to me the president wants to be in the middle of it.
But one has to wonder, given the amount of time we've seen, say President Clinton or President Carter, devote to this, whether that's what the American people want. You know, they want the president, as he said a couple of nights ago, to be focused on jobs and focused on economic recovery here at home and just as a year ago people were concerned when he spent so much time on health care and not on the economy, if he now begins to invest a lot of time on the Middle East, you know, which has been a graveyard for a lot of efforts in the past, as Jack Cafferty just said, I think Americans are going to have some doubts about the wisdom of that.
BLITZER: Cause those of us who have covered these peace kind of negotiations for many years know it's going to be almost impossible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to make the very difficult concessions they need to make if they are just talking, for example, to Senator Mitchell or even to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. It's going to take the president of the United States to get them both together, as Jimmy Carter did back in 1978, '79 in achieving the Israeli/Egyptian Peace Treaty.
GERGEN: Well, I do think, Wolf, that -- and the fact that Hillary Clinton is the secretary of state and given her international star power, that that actually is an asset for the president than she could play -- I don't know whether she would be a Henry Kissinger, you know, shuttling back and forth -- but she could be the strong secretary of state that's needed in this situation.
And working with George Mitchell, who is a very effective negotiator as we know from the Northern Ireland situation, she could, in effect, I think the president could let her take the lead for now and then come in later if in fact the talks are going well.
But, you know, we've got a big, big deadline coming up here just a little while from now later in September when the first big major substantive issue comes to the floor about these settlements. Mr. Netanyahu is under enormous pressure within his own party to, you know, end the moratorium on settlements, to begin construction and doing so aggressively, and it's conceivable he could even lose power if he doesn't do something on settlements. On the other hand, the Palestinians are saying if you go forward with settlements and forget the talks.
Transcript from CNN's The Situation Room aired on 2, 2010