Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush's watch as 'deficits as far as the eye can see.' But Mr. Obama's budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?

When you appoint someone, you appoint somebody because of their character, their convictions, their abilities. And not because you have a belief, a confidence, in a foreordained outcome in any given decision.

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.

Senator McCain believes there ought to be a limit to how much the government can take from anybody, and he believes that today with the federal tax rate at 35 percent that that's more than the government ought to be taking from any individual regardless of how much they make.

I've been booed on stages. I'm a little bit tougher than to walk off a stage because someone says something ugly.

I hate to sound sort of diffident about it but it strikes me that a lot of people on the right have got active lives and are doing other things.

If we're going to have a strong and dynamic economy in the years ahead, we need to tackle some of the structural challenges that our economy faces and the tax code is one of the biggest.