Vaclav Havel was a really popular leader. He couldn't believe that he was really there. I mean, he still dressed in black T-shirts and jeans and was very kind of '60s. And he began to realize the seriousness of it. And he knew how to strategize. And he had a very keen political sense, but he didn't want to be like the old communist leaders.

If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a President fresh from a war victory.

The heyday perhaps of American public infrastructure is the Sputnik moment of the 1950s, the [Dwaight] Eisenhower administration, for instance, which rolls out the modern interstate system. The highway system of the United States is built during this period.

We're obviously in speculation territory here, because we don't know what the Trump administration is going to do.

Politics is in my blood. I'd love to be involved in 2008, maybe even '06.

One can understand the politics of that at this moment. It's an effort to buy time for a constituency of workers who have really been suffering in the last 20 years, and who need to be prepared and be given time to prepare for a transition to a very different type of employment that we may moving on to in the coming decades.

And I've been incredibly lucky to have a long career in journalism that has given me a front-row seat to some of the most important moments in modern American political life.