If I had to fault President [Barack] Obama, I would say that sometimes governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization.

We still are America though. We're still a country that is a country of social mobility. We're still a country of immigrants. We're still a country with common ancestors. And reviving the civics of America and the idea that we're going to be united, at least not right now, but in some common future, and talking in that hopeful way that Martin Luther King did, that Abraham Lincoln did, seems to me that's the way.

It's always dangerous to overinterpret what Donald Trump says at any one moment.

We're no longer living in Tammany Hall America.

Those cultural wars, Sexual Revolution issues are fading from the scene, and the coming generation has basically settled them.

Memo to young journalists: Democratic victories are always ascribed to hope; Republican ones to rage.

I learned I'm not a science writer. I'm not very good at describing how something is happening. I try to describe "So What?"