There are party leaders, big corporation, Wall Street. There are very wealthy individuals who kind of represent where the Democratic Party, the official Democratic Party was and to some extent still is.

You`ve got to just follow the money [in Washington]. You see it. There`s no countervailing power.

Socialism for rich bankers and capitalism for everyone else.

The presidency is probably the loneliest office in America. Regardless of your friends, regardless of how good your marriage is, regardless of anything, you are alone there at the top.

You have to keep a sense of humor about yourself, more than anything else. You've got to take the issues very seriously, but you can't take yourself too seriously. And Washington is a city in which everybody takes themselves extraordinarily seriously.

I have found over the years that the most important way of getting people to relax is self-deprecating humor.

Here's why I think the public service jobs are almost unavoidable: When we have downturns in the economy - and we will, for we haven't repealed the business cycle - unemployment will build, yet we no longer have any safety net. What are we going to do? Unless we decide to pull out all the stops and lower interest rates immediately and risk turning a recession into wild inflation, we're going to have to figure out some way of providing some more, not job security, but employment security.