Sunday Sound: Heard on 'This Week'

NEW YORK, April 8, 2012— -- Below is a list of some of the notable things said on the "This Week" roundtable.

Game On: Obama and Romney Launch Negative Attacks

1) CHALIAN: What struck me is that the two candidates now for the general election have launched on a negative frame of each other. This is not going to be a campaign -- and I don't mean to bemoan negative campaigning, we know it works and we know it's effective. But this is not going to be a campaign it seems based on a prescriptive, positive vision about what they're each going to do in 2013 should they take office. This is clearly a negative frame. On the policy, each side is trying to call the other out of the mainstream, but also in that clip you just played, Jake, on character, they're in a battle to try to convince the American public the other is more out of touch. And so by building this negative frame as the launch week of the general election, I'm not very hopeful that we're going to have much more of a positive vision going forward.

2) NOONAN: I heard the beginning of what is going to be a tough and maybe even brutal campaign…… The president -- first of all, I wasn't that aware that Mr. Romney has started his campaign, but boy, it's obvious that Mr. Obama has. He was tough. He was stark. He was dividing and labeling. Normally at this point, a candidate for the presidency, an incumbent candidate, will take a more benign, embracing tone. There was none of that. It was stark, dividing, us versus them, and that suggests brutal days ahead for the next seven months, I think.

3) DYSON: I think also his {Romney's} problems with women are huge. I mean, the tone-deaf character of Republican rhetoric about female contraception, about their relationship to the state, about who owns their uterus and how their health care is supported is incredibly discouraging when you hear from a Republican candidate who shows no sensitivity and has only personal and existential references to his wife in his own $100, $200 million home…

Reactions to Obama Challenging the Supreme Court not to Overturn his Signature Health Care Law

4) DYSON: If you can't deal with this reasoned, articulate expression of difference and dissent and calling that bullying. And on the one hand Obama has to be worried about, I can't be an angry black man. I can't speak up in a certain way. He's already constrained by the stereotypes that prevail. If you can't even take his dissent as an expression of legitimate disagreement and instead of ascribing to him bullying, I don't see how...

FREELAND: You think being black has made the president less effective?DYSON: Well, it's made his job much more difficult because even white liberals who support him, obviously play into certain racial scripts. Black people who support him -- and -- and across the board, I think it's very difficult for the president to be able to maneuver because he has to be so concerned. He can focus on the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, but can't necessarily highlight the 44th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. There are choices to be made. I think he's done an extraordinarily interesting and powerful job of it. But I think the constraints are not his, but imposed on him from the outside.

5) NOONAN: Can I say this -- the president is known as an extremely bright man. He was an instructor of constitutional law. For him to say something so deeply incorrect and almost unknowing about the -- the purpose of the Supreme Court seemed provocative. At the very least sloppy and what the heck is he doing? But at the most, provocative. A real brush back. A real, I'm going to go to war with the court.

Should Hillary Run In 2016?

6) WILL: Yes, I think she ought to start raising money and plunge in. She'll have to deal with Governor O'Malley of Maryland and Governor Cuomo of New York, a whole rising generation. And at that point, the Clinton will be a distant memory in elective office, in the presidency, and it's going to look so '90s.

7) FREELAND: Yeah, I think the State Department has been the making of her. That's the really interesting point. I think in 2008, she was still really running as Mrs. Clinton, as the first lady. That was the big thing that was on her CV. And what has changed about Hillary now, she is running as a very successful secretary of state in a difficult environment, right?

George Will on Women's Admission to the Augusta Golf Tournament

8) WILL: Sure, it's an anachronism. I'm an anachronism in a great many ways. But there are women's clubs in this country. There are women's colleges in this country. More power to them……………… I don't want to join a club that doesn't have women. Some of my best friends are women. I like women. But what is the problem with allowing these people to have their anachronisms? I thought diversity was one of the signal values--