The American people are both anxious for change. We're in a time of flux.

I'm blown away. I'm flabbergasted the president [Barack Obama] made the phone call to Rouhani after 30-plus, `79, 33 years or so. And there's a reason we haven't negotiated with Iran, because they're state-sponsored terrorists. They're the central bank for terrorism around the world.

If we’re going to have arguments, let’s have arguments — but let’s make them debates worthy of this body and worthy of this country.

The arts are what makes life worth living. You've got food, you've got shelter, yeah. But the things that make you laugh, make you cry, make you connect - make you love are communicated through the arts. They aren't extras.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning.

And there’s been drift in Afghanistan over the last couple of years. That’s something that we intend to fix this.

All this marked them as vaguely liberal, although their ideas would never congeal into anything like a firm ideology; in this, too, they were American.