I went through six years of battles on health care because I didn't have $100 million worth of advertising saying how it would never work.

We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We see no military - we seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can.

We are growing the economy in smart ways and rebuilding our infrastructure and investing in science and development and that we stay true to those values that helped to get us here.

We've got to make sure that our economy is strong at home so that we can project military power overseas.

The Balkanization of the media means that nobody is having a single conversation with a single set of agreed-upon facts and assumptions the way you had as recently as the 90s.

I think that our politics everywhere are gonna be going through this bumpy phase. But as long as we stay true to our Democratic principles, as long as elections have integrity, as long as we respect freedom of speech, freedom of religion, as long as there are checks and balances in our governments so that the people have the ability to not just make judgments about how well government is serving them but also change governments if they're not serving them well, then I have confidence that over the long term, progress will continue.

Let me tell you another place to look for some savings. We are currently spending $10 billion a month in Iraq when they have a $79 billion surplus. It seems to me that if we're going to be strong at home as well as strong abroad, that we have to look at bringing that war to a close.