With a weak and rotting core, you don't have much of a foreign policy. You're discounted at the negotiating table, economically and militarily. So when people ask what's the best course of action for the U.S.-China relationship, I can give you ten academic responses. But the reality is we need to rebuild our core.

In any walk of life, a positive, upbeat outlook trumps any adversarial act. Revenge is counterproductive. Unproductive emotions limit one's ability to move forward, to focus, to think positively, to act creatively.

Our political debates today are corrosive and not reflective of the belief that Abe Lincoln espoused back in his day: that we are a great country because we are a good country.

It's a tribal state, and it always will be. Whether we like it or not, whenever we withdraw from Afghanistan, whether it's now or years from now, we'll have an incendiary situation. Should we stay and play traffic cop? I don't think that serves our strategic interests.

To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.

In a day and age of global competition and instantaneous financial flows, you have to be highly sensitive to the way in which tax policy impacts your overall competitiveness as a country.

I would vote to increase the debt limit if there was a corresponding level of cuts. And if there was some serious talk about a balanced budget amendment, which we as governors always had to deal with.