It's a rough and tumble game whenever power is involved - people's ambitions, their desires, their competitive spirit will often push them to play outside the rules. It's dramatic, it's interesting, and I think it's something we can all identify with to a degree.

Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.

My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole - I was an advance man.

I don't think that Washington is a fundamentally bad or corrupt place.

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have a better life than your parents did, and your children will have a better life than you did.

At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk - games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance I head over to my friend Kyri’s house to play his PS3.