But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

It is absolutely important that we have a unified alliance and that we explain to the Russians that you cannot be a 21st-century superpower, or power, and act like a 20th-century dictatorship.

Congress has become so dysfunctional that more and more of a burden is placed on the agencies to fill in the gaps. And the gaps get bigger and bigger because they're not constantly refreshed and tweaked.

America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.

This kind of inequality - a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression - hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling...it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity... That’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

we will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities

Think about it: Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.