A great power has to have the discipline not only to go when necessary but to know when not to go. Getting involved in ethnic, religious civil wars is a recipe for disaster.

If I were president, I would want to spend a lot of time going to the legislatures and telling them about best practices, whether it's about fighting poverty, whether it's about educating kids. The states are the laboratories where we can see what works. And I think presidents can have a much better relationship with legislatures.

I remember when the Egyptian ambassador to the United States stood in the Rose Garden and pledged Arab commitment to removing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

Do you think that I like to have to fight the leaders in my own party over this or that? Of course not. There's no joy in that. But John Kennedy may have said it best - sometimes my party asks too much.

I mean, it would be very easy to make an inflammatory statement on what we ought to do on cyber. I don't think that that's productive. But to allow the Russian activity to go unresponded to is not acceptable.

I don't read polls to decide what I'm going to do.

I do not support a civil war. I don't want to be policeman of the world. But we can't back off of this.