CBS News' Predictions for 2011

CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer invited some of CBS News' best reporters to offer their forecast for the coming year on Sunday's "Face the Nation". Schieffer noted that all of the predictions made by the panel of correspondents last year came true. That seems unlikely this time, since CBS reporters faced off on their forecasts for 2011.

Chief White House correspondent Chip Reid predicted that Vice President Joe Biden "is to some degree going to win the battle over Afghanistan. He said recently that in July the president will announce something more than a token withdrawal. I think he's right." On a less important note he added that "the Phillies will win the World Series with their blockbuster line up."

CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan sounded a more pessimistic note: "I predict come fighting season in Afghanistan, whatever fragile gains have been made recently in the surge will be reversed. And I suspect that Chip could be right for different reasons, not that a big drawdown will happen but that Joe Biden's strategy might in the end win the day, because Democrats are desperate to get out of Afghanistan and seem to be willing to do so at any cost, even though the president may not necessarily agree with that."

Congress correspondent Nancy Cordes predicted that after an initial rough patch, the Democrats and Republicans will work together better than anyone expected. "The debt is going to be the issue that brings them together," she said.

Investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson made the opposite claim: "I think after an initial patch of cooperation between Congress they will be further divided than ever, and in 2011 drawing battle lines for 2012."

Last year's round table guests' foresight was extraordinarily accurate. CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford even made three perfect predictions: Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens would retire, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan would be named as his replacement, and her alma mater, University of Alabama, would win the national football championship.

Schieffer said: "The only person who had a wrong prediction was the moderator. I thought TCU [Schieffer's alma mater] would win the Fiesta Bowl. For some strange reason they didn't. I'm going to double down. For my prediction I'm going to say they are going to beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl this year."