Like an odorless gas, [inequality] pervades every corner of the United States and saps the strength of the country's democracy. But it seems impossible to find the source and shut it off.

American politics can produce great men and women, but it is profoundly insular.

I do think Donald Trump would be a catastrophic turn in American history.

This is what Newt Gingrich has wrought - is a politics in which it's very easy to destroy and very hard to build.

I don't think of Hillary Clinton as a bad choice. She's an uninspiring choice. She is a deeply imperfect choice, largely for reasons of her own tendency to get into a defensive crouch and create greater problems for herself and the rest of us by refusing to have a transparent reckoning.

The biggest issue for me is whether large numbers of Americans can begin to think that government can actually help make the country a fairer place. And that's partly a matter of policies that achieve results in terms of reducing inequality and raising middle-class and working-class incomes, which have been flat for decades. But it's also symbolic and rhetorical, it's whether Hillary Clinton can - or whoever's president - can persuade Americans that it's happening and that they can begin to trust their elected officials a little bit more and their institutions of government a little bit more.

Politics should be, you know, as exciting as literature, as exciting film.