It’s not that Egypt doesn’t have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.

People want reality that tells them how right they are all the time.

People tend to marry people with similar-width noses, eyes similarly apart, with complementary immune systems.

The things that make them similar - their machismo, their expansionary braggadocio - is going to turn them I think into bitter and dangerous enemies. We will look back on this moment where we thought Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were sort of close as a moment of bitter irony, when they get into a schoolyard display against each other, amping up each other's worst tendencies and putting the two countries in some sort of scary position.

Politics is based on social identity, and so, again, there is going to be differences between rural and urban and between left and right.

I agree with the idea of cutting [budget], but it should all be coming out of entitlements for the affluent and not out of domestic discretionary, which is welfare, education, all the stuff the government does, parks, FBI, and it shouldn't be coming out of Medicaid.

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive.