I was in the White House, probably the only administration I'll ever work for. The administration was not a success, neither at home nor abroad. The Iraq War was not a success. The condition of the average person was not enough better at the end of seven years of George Bush than it was at the beginning, and certainly it all ended in the collapse that was the Great Recession. So I feel a sense of karmic obligation to the universe because of that.

My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.

If right and left are competing to be the biggest victim, who is competing to be the government?

People who want to wage cultural wars ought to keep in mind that cultural views often don't move at all for a very long time, but when they move they can move very fast.

Donald Trump is the least unpopular thing about today's Republican Party. I mean, the idea that a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan could say, "Let's toss Trump overboard and return to our program of plutocratic politics, health care removal, massive income tax cuts for the affluent, deregulation of finance" - if they cut loose from Donald Trump, it's like, you know, storm in channel, continent cut off. If they cut loose from him, they are much likelier to sink.

World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained.