I'm saying there is no way that I will do this, because it's really not me. I know my strengths, and governor Romney needs to find someone who wants to run with him. There are many people who will do it very, very well, and I'll support the ticket.

The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.

I learned a lot about my parents, who were both teachers. I had known that my parents were very strongly in favor of education. I had known that they had an impact on a lot of people, but people came out of the woodwork who have said, "You know, without your father, I would never have gone to college," very successful people. And so I learned how widespread their educational evangelism really was.

I believe that Reverend [Florine] Thompson's hit on something. My parents, I and a lot of my friends growing up in that community had tremendous drive.

You have to have a strong sense of your values and a strong sense of who you are, because there are a lot of events and a lot of people who will pull you in this direction or that direction.

Our effort to build stability through authoritarians in the Middle East for 60 years had given us neither democracy nor stability.

There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 11 September attacks. There was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.