In order to get big things done, sometimes, presidents have to be deft at moving the pea around under the shells.

We, The People is more than a statement of purpose. It is an acknowledgement of an obligation to each other.

For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart the notion that the government is all of us and that, therefore, the government may keep things in trust for all of us.

Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.

If religion comes into the public square, it is as vulnerable as any other human institution to be pelted with produce. Ignorance does not become wisdom just because you gussy it up with the Gospels.

Ronald Reagan was a dim hack who did horrible damage to almost everything he touched.