If you can look back and say, "The economy's better. Our security's better. The environment's better. Our kids' education is better," if you can say that you've made things better, then considering all the challenges out there, you should feel good. But I'm the first to acknowledge that I did not crack the code in terms of reducing this partisan fever.

Like no other illness, AIDS tests our ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes - to empathize with the plight of our fellow man. While most would agree that the AIDS orphan or the transfusion victim or the wronged wife contracted the disease through no fault of their own, it has too often been easy for some to point to the unfaithful husband or the promiscuous youth or the gay man and say This is your fault. You have sinned. I don't think that's a satisfactory response. My faith reminds me that we all are sinners.

Whatever decisions I make are going to be based first on a strategy to keep us safe and then we'll figure out how to resource it.

Here in Europe some of the challenges have to do with structures that are so complicated. You've got Brussels, and you've got parliament, you've got councils and then you've got national governments. So people sometimes don't feel as if they know who's making decisions, and the more that we can bring people in and engage them, the better. Some of it is also cultural and social, people's sense of identity.

The Philippines made a lawful and peaceful effort to resolve their maritime claims with China using the tribunal established under the Law of the Sea Convention (Unclos). The tribunal's ruling delivered a clear and legally binding decision on maritime claims in the South China Sea as they relate to China and the Philippines - and that ruling should be respected. We believe this decision can and should serve as an opportunity to renew efforts to address maritime claims peacefully.

It is possible for leaders or regimes to be cruel, bigoted, twisted in their world views and still make rational calculations with respect to their limits and their self-preservation.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.