Keeping your head down and doing the best job you can in the beginning gives you the opportunity to be evaluated on the basis of the contributions you are making. [Then], when you feel strongly about your work or about a position, you'll be given more attention [than] if you hadn't done that constantly.

Hundreds of thousands of kids now have a chance to be adopted because I worked to change our adoption and foster care system.

I think that, given the threat that ISIS poses to the region and beyond, as we have sadly seen in our own country, it is important to keep the Iraqi army on a path where they can actually take back territory, to work with the Sunni tribes in Anbar province and elsewhere so that their fighters can be also deployed, to work with the Kurds to provide them the support, but they're doing the fighting. We're doing the support and enabling.

We have to tackle the plague of gun violence.

If there are issues, if there's wrongdoing, people have to be held accountable and we have to try to deter future bad behavior.

Historically, it is important to try to understand your adversary in order to figure out how they are thinking, what they will be doing, how they will react.

I'm fighting for people who cannot wait for changes, and I'm not making promises that I cannot keep.