Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone.

Decision-making power, whether it's on foreign affairs or domestic affairs, is concentrated in the White House in a reasonably small circle.

It's rare in an administration for a secretary of state and a secretary of defense to get along really well.

One of the frustrations about the modern world is that we don't even have a good vocabulary to describe our state. The word sentiment sounds mushy. [...] Sentiment is not mushy.

Donald Trump is sitting on the control deck of the starship Enterprise, and he can push a lot of pretty buttons, but those buttons aren't connected to anything. And so nothing is happening.

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

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year. . . . A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.