"Tonight I made the decision that it was the best thing for our country, for the American people that I not continued to be considered by the president for nomination of Secretary of State because I didn't want to see a confirmation process that was very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting, and very disruptive. Because there are so many things we need to get done. As a country, and the first several months of a second term president's agenda is really the opportunity to get the crucial things done. We're talking about comprehensive immigration reform, balanced deficit reduction, job creation, that's what matters. And to the extend that my nomination could have delayed or distracted or deflected or maybe even some of these priorities impossible to achieve, I didn't want that. And I'd much prefer to continue doing what I'm doing which is a job I love at the United Nations."

 

President Obama accepted her decision to bow out, calling her an extraordinarily capable patriotic and passionate public servant. Here now with more on what led up to that decision and who's the leading candidate now are Dana Bash, political analyst Gloria Borger and David Gergen.

 

"Dana, what was the pivotal the moment in all this from ambassador Rice?"

 

"No question it was the series of meeting she had a couple of weeks ago here on the Hill. First of all, with her chief foes, Rebpulican foes, senator McCain, Graham and Ayotte. But more importantly, it was probably with a Republican who hadn't quite made up her mind, and that is the moderate Republican from Marine, Susan Collins. By all accounts, that meeting did not go well at all because according to a source, who's familiar with that meeting, she really didn't want to answer really basic questions and got frustrated and maybe even a little prickly at some of the basic questions. And after that the feeling, even among some Democrats who talked to these Republicans, was they weren't, really weren't sure if she can't handle meetings with the U.S senators, how was she going to be on the world stage representing the U.S there. So that definitely was an issue, there is no question that the president in his statement made clear that he didn't think Susan Rice was treated fairly, there was no question that was politics at play here by Republicans, who were really really angry about Benghazi, and she illustrated that, but it was more than that, it was also personality driven because even Democrats think that she is very smart, very capable, but maybe doesn't have the right personality for this job."

 

"Gloria, earlier I heard you say that you think that ambassador Rice probably just underestimated for this club, what did you mean by that?"

 

"Right, well, I spoke with, that was from a Democrat, very close to the White House, who said, the club is very important on Capitol Hill, John Kerry is the leader in that club, John McCain likes him an awful lot and would clearly go along with nomination  also, when traveled up there, she wanted to go up there to talk to these senators. There is a sense from the source that she kind of overestimated her ability to woo them over on the question of Benghazi, I mean that was a really big pre-existing condition for her. And as Dana just pointed out, she didn't win over Susan Collins who was quite important to her."