Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.

We need to EARN the right to be leaders. It is to our peril when we are given things for which we are not qualified. For Believers, we must only engage in activities for which the Lord has called us.

In 2007 and 2008, it was impossible to get American and British policy makers, or Pakistani politicians, to acknowledge that the Taliban leadership was in Pakistan. This is the great virtue of the early statements of the Obama administration, when Obama himself, Richard Holbrooke and others, said that the threat to both countries comes principally from western Pakistan, in Balujistan and Waziristan. So there has been some progress, but probably the hardest part is yet to come.

Great leaders do not see people for who they are, but who than can become. Further, the great leader compels those that follow them to become that man or woman of the future, likely exceeding the expectations of both.

Politics is a profession, and a form of service, and it should draw people who are passionate and have deep experience of the complex, changing nature of the world.

We need to give the private sector many more powerful incentives to do research and development, to bring ideas and new discoveries to market in Canada, and commercialize them here, and stay here through successive stages of growth. But they can only do it with better government policies that give them more powerful incentive.

Despite 18 years as a non-partisan public servant, my deeper "tribal" affinity has always been Tory. The Afghanistan file has given me an additional reason to cleave to that side of the spectrum. Canadian Conservatives have generally been more comfortable and confident with hard security issues.