Now is the time to be bold. It is easy when the wind is at your back. But the real test is now when the wind is in our face. That's when we find out if we are tough enough. Inspired enough, committed enough.

If you are wealthy and can hire enough accountants and attorneys, you can find ways around the code. It's fundamentally not fair. It wastes a lot of time and energy and effort to comply with it. It doesn't encourage savings and investment. And we need to simply it and make it more fair.

Well, marriage is a very important part of our culture and our society. If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal.

Look, America was a narrowly divided country in 2000;49-49 was what Michael Barone called it. It's a 49-49 nation.

In Europe and the United States, you've got different systems to select candidates, and no system is perfect.

I would have strong opinions and be prepared to argue my case, but if you talk to my colleagues, I think you'd find they consider me the jokester, the informal mayor of the West Wing.

Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.