And I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate, but the fact of the matter is we used the same advisers and they say it's the same plan.

You [as a president] have to have a strong team around you. You have to have respect for institutions and the process to make good decisions because you are inherently reliant on other folks.

When I came into office, the world was divided. Iran was resurgent. Iran is at its weakest point, economically, strategically, militarily, then since - then in many years. And we are going to continue to keep the pressure on to make sure that they do not get a nuclear weapon. That's in America's national interest and that will be the case so long as I'm president.

The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents - number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome - so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.

If we're not there making the argument then the cultural gulf that Republicans try to exploit saying, "Ah, these city slickers: they're all looking down on you, they don't care about you. They're just trying to help out their various special interest constituencies," that argument ends up being successful.

I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

It is very rare I come to an event where I’m like the fifth or sixth most interesting person.