If we got there and we looked up and we said, "You know what? Black folks are still doing a little bit worse off than whites, but it's not like it was 20 years ago," then we can have a discussion about how do we get that last little bit. But that's a high-class problem to have.

Letting the free market do whatever it wants. That's not been historically how we grow. We have to invest in education, in rebuilding broadband lines and roads and runways, and it's important that we bring back American manufacturing and regulations to prevent consumers from being cheated.

If you're an American and you are, you know, subscribing to the ideals and the creed and the values that we believe in as a country, you know, then we don't have a religious test in this country.

My conviction is that those fights need to be fought right now and can be won. And if in fact we have finite political capital, energy, resources, we need to win those fights.

... the country deserves us to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good.

With only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, oil isn't enough. This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. A strategy that's cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.

We are in what we hope is an intensive diplomatic phase now. It will not be open-ended.