Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, September 25th.

I'm John Dickerson in Washington with David Plotz, and Emily Bazelon is in New York City appearing live in our little closet room, completely out of focus.

Via hologram.

Yeah, which makes this feel like a very dreary piece of performance art.

The first topic for us today will be Afghanistan and the challenges for the president on that.

Then we're going to talk quickly about the United Nations and the president on the global stage, also at the G20.

And then finally we're going to talk about political comebacks, all of the people who are trying to make them, who may never make them,

and the sad and increasingly disgusting tale of John Edwards.

So let's start with Pakistan.

The president over the weekend was on...

Pakistan?

Sorry, Pakistan.

You know, I think of Pakistan and Afghanistan together.

It's the same problem.

I think that's fair.

Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because the president on the Sunday

shows last weekend talked about Afghanistan and basically said we've got to reasset we've

come up with a strategy before we add more troops.

A day later on Monday in the Washington Post, Bob Woodward released or wrote a piece about the 66-page report from Stanley McChrystal,

the president's top commander in the field in Afghanistan calling for more troops and assessing the state of play

in Afghanistan. There's a big question about what the president's going to do. The Pentagon would

like him to behave and do whatever he's going to do quickly. The president is saying he may take

...