The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

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.

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.

You have to raise $100 million, probably, to be serious.

The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.

You don't say that for a senator to be a great senator he has to vote against his constituency.

First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.