All of the leading terrorism experts are clear on one thing: that in terms of protecting America, we are almost never going to know a place or a time of an attack.

There are many instances in which those at the uppermost levels of the White House were feeling the President [Barack Obama] was not fully informed of the flow of events and, in some cases, where policies were going in the White House.

If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat.

Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.

A little known area often defines the fortunes of leaders -- management skills.

To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them.

Two sons, they'll both be presidents after they win their Nobel Prizes. And the daughters, they'll be prima ballerinas before they become the president of Princeton and start their Internet company. And I just started to think about What's the conventional load of those expectations you carry around? You have to pull them out one by one and smash them in the corner. You realize the pile is quite high. But in a way, it becomes oddly liberating to do that.