Go walk the streets of Beijing. It's pretty hard to argue it isn't a modern city. Now, if you go outside [of Beijing], in the rural areas, that's true. But rural America, you can say the same thing, in Appalachia there's an awful lot of poverty and lack of education.

There's a fascinating statistic: One out of every four people in America has visited New York since 9/11. It is astounding. Now, I don't know how you count it; it's some people coming multiple times.

Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college.

Most people won't have opportunity to do full-time service, but those lucky enough to have monetary wealth or some spare time really can make an enormous difference. As someone who's now in the public sector, and is seeing up-close-and-personal the real impact of what we do and what we give, I can tell you: every dollar and every volunteer help, in more ways than you can count.

Today, you're a piranha if you are seen having coffee with somebody from the other party in many cases.

What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you're going to have enormous impact on America, that's a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.

Millions of Americans have contributed to building a stronger Israel; I've been proud to be one of them. Last year, I went to Jerusalem to help dedicate in my father's name a new MDA medical facility which treats people of all faiths and all nationalities absolutely equally.