Our role in the world is not to roam the globe looking for new dictators to topple. Our role in the world is to make ourselves a beacon of hope. Make ourselves stronger at home, but also our role in the world, yes, is also to confront evil when it rises.

As Americans, we have shown ourselves to have the greatest military on the face of the planet, but we are not so very good at anticipating threats and appreciating just how difficult it is to build up stable democracies, to make the investments and sustainable development that we must as a nation if we are to attack the root causes of these sorts of instability.

The Clintons are very close with everybody on the Democratic side.

We took out the safe haven in Afghanistan, but now there is, undoubtedly, a larger safe haven and we must rise to this occasion in collaboration and with alliances to confront it, and invest in the future much better human intelligence so we know what the next steps are.

But we should not lose sight of how far we are coming and what a big hole we were left by George W. Bush.

If you give voters a choice between a Democrat who promises to do nothing and a Republican who promises to do nothing, they’re generally going to side with the Republican, because they’re better at that than we are.

I think we should want all of our cities to become more compassionate places, frankly.