Jim Stavridis is the former NATO commander who is sometimes on people's lists, also very plausible, self-possessed, someone with sobriety.

Jeff Sessions has some problematic spots on his history, but he has been a pretty normal, respectable senator, more conservative than a lot of us, but a respectable senator for a long period of time.

Students are too busy jumping through the next hurdle in the résumé race to figure out what they really want. They are too frantic tasting everything on the smorgasbord to have life-altering encounters. They have a terror of closing off options. They have been inculcated with a lust for prestige and a fear of doing things that may put their status at risk.

Parties that are majority parties are incoherent parties.

I think the Republican budget priorities are messed up. I salute for the way they're attacking some of the entitlement programs, but they are taking huge cuts, by pretending they're just block-granting it to the states, out of Medicaid, from the least fortunate.

Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views.

When you talk about the problem of illegal immigration, people are angry and polarized. When you talk about the answers, the debate gets a little different.