[Michelle Obama] was the hardest sell. And she never fully embraced being in the public spotlight, which is ironic, given how good she is.

The United States of America has helped underwrite the global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.

Now, I've lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago no matter what some folks say. You can see it not just in statistics, you see it in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum. But we're not where we need to be. And all of us have more work to do.

My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

The Gulf States are extraordinarily suspicious of Iran for good reason. They view Iran as meddling in their affairs. They have seen Iran level asymmetric attacks against their facilities or their interests.

Reality has a way of asserting itself.

We too often let the material things serve as indicators that we're doing well, even though something inside us tells us that were not doing our best. That we are avoiding that which is hard, but also necessary. That we are shrinking from rather than rising to the challenges of the age.