These were lobbyists—many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings.

Message matters. Message matters almost as much as actions.

Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches.

For any thinking person, it (perpetual happiness) is untenable. If you're a thinking person, your upbeat sometimes, said sometimes.

The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government.

[Barack Obama] says that he thinks America felt better, more confident, because Washington was not simply in a gridlock, in stasis, where nothing was being done. And he talks about that as a positive.

The informed, unmanaged question. That's the most dangerous thing at a press conference anywhere.