 I've been talking to people close to the president and they say this is someone who has been on the public stage for more than a half century. Elected to the Senate in 1972 in the wake of a personal tragedy. He has been through that and political humiliations over the years. He keeps going and going and plowing forward. He's stubborn personally, stubborn politically. His friends say he's not going to give up the presidency, something he's had his eye on for so long.