Middle class Americans don't ask for special favors, they just want basic fairness, and a President who fights for that ideal.

I have confidence in my campaign. I have assembled a great team that is going to beat George W. Bush, and any rumors to the contrary are completely erroneous.

You can't play sports without losing sometimes and, in losing, you learn something about grace and how to act under pressure.

I want to fully fund education, No Child Left Behind, special-needs education. And that's how we're going to be more competitive, by making sure our kids are graduating from school and college.

I think that for many of us, the years of the Civil Rights movements - Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy running for president in 1968 to end the war and so forth - these were defining moment in terms of trying to hold government accountable and have a level of responsibility and truth-telling.

When I was in Vietnam I learned a lot about the promises that soldiers make to each other. The Marines have a promise to never leave behind their dead. In this country, as citizen soldiers, we need to make the commitment to each other that we will never leave our veterans behind.

As President, I will not be the last to know what is going on in my command.