As you look back in history, we [the United States] have done wonderful things, the Marshal Plan is the most obvious. After World War II, we spent billions of dollars to rebuild Europe or at least part of Europe after the devastation of World War II. We did it out of charity, but we also did it to keep the Russians from getting deeply into Europe.

A lot of it was, you know, you look for moments where, for instance, we were dependent on Abraham Lincoln making sure that the slaves were freed or John Kennedy bringing civil rights, or the first one I wrote about, George Washington trying to stop the British from invading and ending this country before it even began. Those were turning points where, if you had not had a president stepping up to the plate, if there wasn't a story like that, we would not be here.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.

Legacy is what a president does that affects later generations.

The point is that you see candidates running in these different kinds of contests. A primary shows you something that's different from a state party convention, which shows you something that is different than what a caucus shows you.

Under the system that we now have to nominate presidential candidates, for instance, I would prefer that we have a system that is closer to, say, the one we had in the 1960s.

Roosevelt understands that there are things that are worth surrendering your career for, like defending the country against [Adolf] Hitler.