My experience politically has always been that one-word definition of politics: money. Keep your eye on the buck. And that tells you where the American people are going to be.

Sept. 11 jolted America out of its second gilded age.

In the class that I teach at one University, I stress that my one-word definition of politics is money. You can't name a subject matter that money doesn't touch.

Since Obama has expressed admiration for the portrait of Abraham Lincoln that Doris Kearns Goodwin paints in Team of Rivals, he could do the 16th president one better: He should name Hillary Clinton as his running mate in 2012. That would be both needed change and audacious.

You don't ever earn a right to stop doing anything if you feel there is an obligation to move in terms of public service.

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the way you dress? Or is it the forgiving of certain things? What is black enough?

Africa is not a country, but it is a continent like none other. It has that which is elegantly vast or awfully little.