That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I’m pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. At a time when nobody thought we’d ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana.

I bathe in statistics.

Only FREEDOM has ever been the answer to poverty.

We are a nation of immigrants. We are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ones who wanted a better life, the driven ones, the ones who woke up at night hearing that voice telling them that life in that place called America could be better.

Iraq is fragile and may fall back into a devastating setting. We're not making the kind of progress in Afghanistan that had been promised. And our esteem around the world has fallen. I can't think of a major country. It's hard to think of a single country that has greater respect and admiration for America today than it did five years ago when Barack Obama became President. And that's a very sad, unfortunate state of affairs.

Washington has to become an ally of business, not the opposition of business.

I always enjoy listening to Rush Limbaugh. I often agree with him. Sometimes I disagree with him.