We must retool our nation to prepare for the challenge we already face to maintain our position in the global economy. And this much is certain: America will not have national security without economic security.

A fundamental premise of politics is we can make this work if people just never figure it out.

As a public person, I've always tried to reflect what is embodied in our defining ideals as a nation about equality and fairness and justice and so forth.

We cannot continue to see the Middle East in the context of 9/11. We must see it in the context of 2011.

It's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote.

President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.

The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation.