Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?

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.

Democracy requires you to learn how to lose as well as how to exercise power when you win. And that requires restraint all around. One of the reasons it works is because when you win you don't do things that are so upsetting to the losers that they feel like they have less, they have more to gain by turning over the system.

Donald Trump didn't have a polling operation until very late in his campaign. How did he know what to do? That the Ted Cruz people leaked their polls to Trump because they were looking forward to eliminating all the other rivals, clearing the way for a Cruz-Trump fight that they were certain Cruz would win. In the end, Cruz was the last man standing, it's true. If he had known at the beginning what he knew at the end, he might have thought twice. The Congressional Republican Party thought they could make Trump their tool to impose their very unpopular agenda. Instead, they became his tool.

There is no right to work in a think tank, and these are very privileged positions.

Americans are about to discover that their system is more vulnerable than they thought. There's a lot of complacency in American politics, there's a lot of complacency in advanced democracies generally.