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Tavis: I'm doing well, and yourself?

Harwood: Doing just great.

Tavis: So, what's it been like over the last few days inside the beltway with - this wait and see contest becoming, as I mentioned earlier, Washington's most favorite parlor game, I suspect?

Harwood: Tavis, I gotta tell you, this is the wildest time I can remember in Washington in 20 years of covering this town. You have so many things that have gone wrong for this administration at the same time. And now it's all coming together in the CIA leak case, where we're waiting to see exactly what the fallout is going to be. This is a case that underscores the way the President bet his presidency on the war on terrorism, in a larger sense, and on the war in Iraq. And now that's taken us to this place. The intense fights and emotions around that decision.

Tavis: I want to get to some of the specifics about that larger story that you think we are missing as it relates to the investigation with regard to the CIA leaks here. Before I do that, though, let me - just ask you - long term, and I guess long term is mid term elections, maybe even '08 Presidential elections. Long term, what's the worst case scenario for this Bush White House? Does this story, this issue have legs that canrun that far?

Harwood: Tavis, the worst case is that the President loses the services of a couple of very close trusted advisors, Karl Rove, who's been the key to his political success, in terms of someone on his staff, Scooter Libby who works for Vice President Cheney. That in addition to that you'd see his domestic agenda fall apart. You'd see the public support for the war erode ever further, and it's been eroding over the last year as the American people conclude that this may not be a winnable conflict.

And then you could have the possibility in 2006, next November, that Democrats would retake control of the Congress, and that would really stop this presidency dead in its tracks, because George W. Bush has depended for his agenda on unified Republican control.

Tavis: I've got Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party, on my public radio program, PRI program this weekend, so I suspect I'll get a chance to ask Mr. Dean this question on the weekend. But since you mentioned it, I guess the other question is whether or not the Democrats have a plan. This would not be the first time the Democrats were given a wonderful opportunity, and they couldn't pass muster with it.

Harwood: You know, I do think, Tavis, sometimes we overrate the importance of 10 point plans in politics. However, Democrats do believe that while Republicans are struggling, while the President's struggling, they are going to need, sometime next year, maybe the middle of the year, maybe the early fall, to come out with some sort of a positive agenda so they can tell the American people, 'Hey, not just that these guys who are in are bad and you ought to throw them out, but there's a good reason to give us the keys to the car.'

Tavis: So, this CIA leak case is obviously a big story tonight. But tell me what you think that we are missing. We, the American people, are missing while we focus so myopically, if you will, on who did what inside the White House with this, these particular leaks. There's a much larger - issues, there are, that you think we're missing here.

Harwood: Well, I think the larger issue here is exactly what's going to happen on the Iraq war. The narrow issues at stake in the CIA leak case are, did a couple of important officials in the White House, and we don't know the full range of people who may be involved. Did they intentionally go and out a CIA agent who'd been operating undercover as a way of getting back at her husband, who had been a critic of the war. That's sort of the small-bore case. And then you have the question of whether any of those officials didn't tell the truth, or tried to cover up the truth, as a special prosecutor - investigated the outing of that agent.

But the larger story, Tavis, is what is going to happen with this war in Iraq? Do we know what we're doing? Do we have the possibility of succeeding? We've now had casualties hit the 2,000 mark, which is symbolically important. And the American people have shown, if you look at poll after poll, that they're beginning to get pessimistic about the war. It's been surprising to me, actually Tavis, how strong support for remaining in Iraq has been.

We've seen in our 'Wall Street Journal' NBC poll for some time, that the American people have said, 'Hey, it's not going very well, but we went in there, we ousted Saddam Hussein, we've gotta stay and - finish the job.' Now it's not clear the American people want to finish the job. How long can they stay and - can the administration, as it's promised since going to war in 2003, can they actually transform the Middle East, create democracy over - in a way that makes us safer in the long run?

Tavis: I've appreciated, John, I've appreciated reading what you've written about this, and what others have written about this particular issue. I speak namely of the fact that we're so focused on who did what, to your point that we're missing the larger picture here, which is that if in fact somebody did something, they were in part doing it to keep alive their hopes, their chances, their opportunities to spin why in fact we had gone to Iraq in the first place. I understand the connection you're making.

Again, I appreciate reading folk who have - made that point very clearly. I guess the question, though John, is whether or not the American people understand, will accept, will buy that link? Because they apparently, for at least some time, bought the link that the White House made between Saddam Hussein and September 11. So might they not see that link that you are trying to make here now?

Harwood: Well, I do think the American people, for a long time, bought the idea that Saddam Hussein had something to do with September 11. We saw long after even the administration had said that Saddam wasn't directly involved in 9/11, a lot of the American people thought that he was. Really the question now for Americans is, is this war a good idea in a larger sense?

Is it making us safer? Are we - making ground against the terrorists, or are we losing ground? Are we creating more terrorism? There's a whole line of attack from some Democrats, and we've seen some from Republicans, people who served in the administration of the first President Bush saying, this war might actually be counterproductive. And - so the American people are trying to understand, they don't know a lot of the details either of the leak case.

Or frankly, they have a hard time judging whether we're winning or losing in Iraq. And - they're getting tired of the costs of the war and that's a judgment. I think we're gonna have in a fuller sense in the 2008 election when we get a Republican and a Democratic nominee who come before the American people and debate was this right, or was this wrong.

Tavis: How interesting is it, if you find it interesting at all, that the timing of - the crescendo in this case is so closely linked to the story of today, which is that we have now surpassed the 2,000 dead mark in Iraq?

Harwood: I think that's a coincidence. And - I don't think that anybody in the administration sees this CIA leak investigation as a positive distraction from anything else. It's a horrible story, and really - they story of 2005 for this White House, Tavis, is that it's one bad story after the other. Look at the Social Security plan. That went down. Look what happened in Hurricane Katrina, the negative public response to the handling of that.

Now the costs of Katrina, and what's happening to the federal budget. We've got a very large deficit. The Republican Party's in rebellion over exactly how we're going to handle the budget situation. So they've got some real problems. And I forgot to mention, by the way, the Harriet Miers nomination. That's turned out to be pretty much a disaster for the White House, and they're trying to figure out how they can salvage it.

Tavis: Well John, I - wasn't gonna let you get away without commenting on Harriet Miers, so I'm glad it came back to you - but I was going there anyway. So since we're on the Harriet Miers case, the sum total of all these problems, of all these issues that the White House is having. Clearly, we've had a conversation already about the impact on its credibility, that these - cases are having. The other question is, what kind of impact this has on Republicans. I asked you earlier about what Democrats can do with this, but what's this gonna do to Republicans outside the White House?

Harwood: Look, what has been the secret of the President's ability to get things done throughout - his term in office, it's been Republican unity. And what's happened in the Miers nomination, Tavis, is that unity has split apart. We're seeing fire against Harriet Miers from the left and the right. Really, George W. Bush is about the only person who's strongly for this nomination, and the question is whether he still has the clout in his weakened state to muscle it through the Senate.

We don't know the answer to that. There's more doubt about that today than there was when he nominated her a couple of weeks ago. This is going to be real test, especially given these other things going on in the backdrop.

Tavis: Do you doubt at all though that in a scenario where Rove and Libby both have to leave, that the White House couldn't go forward, that Bush can't still make the most out of - these last - few years in the White House?

Harwood: You can't count any President out with three years to go on his term. There are a lot of smart, capable people in the Republican Party. They will get people to replace Karl Rove and Scooter Libby if they leave. But Karl Rove really has unique value to this President. He's the guy who put together the policies and the constituencies needed to try to move the Republican Party forward as a majority party. It looked a year ago, in November 2004, like they had a narrow majority that might last for a while. That's really going to be endowed if Karl Rove is gone, and if the administration is struggling with so many setbacks.

Tavis: Well, we'll continue to read your work in the 'Wall Street Journal.' National political editor, John Harwood again, with the 'Wall Street Journal.' John, nice to have you on the program.

Harwood: My pleasure, Tavis.

Tavis: My pleasure. All the best to you. Up next on this program, actor Adam Goldberg. You'll know the face, and you'll match the face with the name in just a moment. Stay with us.