Economy's got to get moving, we've got to get the unemployment rate down. That may be the defining issue of the campaign.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Good and solid analysis and a formal way of looking at a problem [are the core ingredients of good decisions].

Only when you have got a clear statement of what you want to achieve, do you ask yourself how you are going to achieve it. In the military we are taught never to go for a single answer, no matter how obvious that might be.

I'll tell you what they're all going to face, whichever one of them becomes president on January 21st of 2009. They will face a military force - a United States military force that cannot sustain - continually sustain 140,000 people deployed in Iraq and the 20-odd or 25,000 people we have deployed in Afghanistan and our other deployments.

Strategy equals execution. All the great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can't be implemented rapidly and efficiently. Good leaders delegate and empower others liberally, but they pay attention to details, every day.

One thing the military does far better than business is train its own leaders. I can't go to IBM and hire a battalion commander. They don't have any.