I don't watch the nightly newscasts on TV . . . nor do I watch the endless hours of people giving their opinion about things. I don't read the editorial pages; I don't read the columnists. It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion.

I think we're making progress. We understand where the power of this country lay. It lies in the hearts and souls of Americans. It must lay in our pocketbooks. It lies in the willingness for people to work hard.

They call our language the mother tongue because the father seldom gets to speak.

Whether or not it needed to happen, I'm still convinced it needed to happen.

Issues are won based upon whether or not you can keep this economy strong; elections are won based upon economic issues and national security issues.

Uganda's budget is 40 percent aid-dependent. Ghana's budget is 50 percent aid-dependent. Even if you cancel the debt, you don't eliminate that aid dependency. This is what I mean by getting to the fundamental root causes of the problem. Government, the state sectors in many African countries need to be slashed so that, you know, you put a greater deal of reliance on the private sector. The private sector is the engine of growth. Africa's economy needs to grow but they're not growing.

We've got a cultural issue in America. We've got to change the whole way the issue is looked at. That's the mission. Some in the political process don't have enough patience for that, and I probably don't either.