How, voters will ask, can we cover 50 million new people without any new doctors or nurses? The answer is to ration health care, with the U.S. government deciding whom will get hip and knee replacements, heart bypass surgery and all manner of medical treatments. And what does rationing mean? It means that the elderly will be denied care, which they can now get whenever they want it.

No true patriot could be for Ron Paul.

The White House will run itself while the president is away. That's why he has to be sure not to be away too much.

The key to controlling your own political party, so that it does not eat you alive, is to realize that while Democratic and Republican leaders differ sharply, their voters do not.

Ronald Reagan cut taxes to raise the deficit to stop liberals in future years from increasing spending. Obama will raise spending to raise the deficit to stop conservatives in future years from cutting taxes. As he funds every liberal dream - from alternative energy production to infrastructure renovation to more federal revenue sharing - he will force a massive expansion in the size of government for a decade to come.

The dependency on the dole, formerly limited in pre-Clinton days to 14 million women and children on AFDC, will now grow to a clear majority of the U.S. population.

Leadership is a dynamic tension between where a politician thinks his country must go and where his voters want it to go.