I think ultimately Obama's ability to rebuild America's image in the world will depend less on his personal good will and more his ability to rebuild an American economic model that seems stable and humane and dynamic.

Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them.

I've heard people in the Middle East tell me that the most inspiring thing for them as people struggling against dictatorship in the Middle East is the memory of the civil rights movement.

I hope Barack Obama puts another woman on the Supreme Court. And this time, I hope it's a woman with kids.

There's a ton of academic literature that shows people are much more critical of female leaders than they are of male leaders. They're much less tolerant of female ambition, much more threatened by female power.

Clinton is a very capable, conscientious person. I think she cares very deeply about policy. She knows a lot about how the government works, and I think those things are very important. You don't really appreciate those things until you get a guy like George W. Bush in the White House, and then you realize that when you don't have someone who knows or cares about government policy, a lot of bad stuff can happen.

On domestic policy, one of the major stories in American politics has been the growing ideological and political self-confidence of the Democratic Party, and the growing ideological and political pessimism of the Republican Party.