Actually, there is no more important task for a leader than to pick people. To make sure you have the very best people working for you.

I think the American people are sophisticated enough and wise enough to make judgments about the candidates and wade through the charges and countercharges that come with the [election 2004] campaign.

Some of the generals are saying, 'We're making progress. We are clearing an area.' But you really don't defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

Diplomacy never stops, and, with or without an election, it never stops.

You can't just have slogans, you can't just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it's going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.

Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're behind.

Politics is not bean bags. It's serious, tough stuff.