Middleness is the very enemy of the bold.

There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing.

Ted Cruz is not the official spokesman for American conservatism. If you want somebody who has been out there, who has offered an alternative - the person who offered an alternative, for example, is... Paul Ryan.

I think the first thing is to recognize a mistake that Obama made. And others have made in thinking that you can revolutionize a system that's unbelievably complex and interlinked, one-sixth of the economy. That was a mistake because whenever you change one thing, it changes 80 other things, and now if you're changing everything at once, you have no idea what the outcome is going to be and you get all of these unintended side effects.

I think if you're going to master policy, especially world affairs, you've got to know history.

Pass legislation. When Obama signs, you've shown seriousness and the ability to govern. When he vetoes, you've clarified the differences between party philosophies and prepared the ground for 2016.

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.