If we make the tough decisions now, we will be one year ahead of 80 percent of the states in the race to economic growth. If we fail to act, we will fall even further behind... by going first, we can become first.

Strengthen an adversary led by a dictator who dreams of reassembling the old Soviet empire? What an extraordinarily dangerous lack of judgment.

I was 32 years old, and I've changed my mind. And the biggest reason that I changed my mind was my seven years as a federal prosecutor. What I learned in those seven years was that we were spending too much time talking about gun laws against law- abiding citizens and not nearly enough time talking about enforcing the gun laws strongly against criminals.

But our leaders of today have decided it's more important to be popular, to say and do what's easy, and say yes rather than to say no, when no is what is required.

Given my last position, that I was the first U.S attorney post 9/11 in New Jersey, I understand acutely the pain and sorrow and upset of the family members who lost loved ones that day at the hands of radical Muslim extremists. And their sensitivities and concerns have to be taken into account.

You can't lay back and wait for somebody else to do it. And I think if the president's made a mistake here, it's this laid-back kind of approach where he's waiting for someone else to solve the problem.

The job of a leader, the job of a governor, the job of a president is to get the people in the room and to bang enough heads together and rub enough arms and cajole enough to have them put the country's and the state's greater interests ahead of their own personal interests.