It hasn't been easy to find American citizens who are willing to pick fruit in 110 degree weather.

Having your fiscal house in order and having a more manageable macro-economic future is going to be very useful in creating growth.

The people who watch Fox are not going to watch CNN. You know, lets be honest.

We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington's elites - politicians and intellectuals - miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today's world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler, but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe.

But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail.

The markets are much more interested in America's long-term trajectory than they are in feeling that there is an acute short-term crisis.

Politics and power is a realm of relative influence.