The most disappointing thing this week is that Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, because he was the intellectual leader of the Republican Party. Because Paul Ryan decided to join Mitt Romney's ticket, he is completely reversed himself on some of the issues he has been very strong on, like the $716 billion in savings that are in two of his budgets.

It's one thing to work women into your talking points. It's another to tell them how you are going to educate their kids, how you are going to ensure they get health care, how we are going to rebuild infrastructure, how they are going to get equal pay.

There's nothing harder than going on TV and saying something that you don't believe. I don't do that anymore.

This is the debate we have every time we talk about the minimum wage, that if we raise it even 50 cents, that it means employers are just going to shut down. It's not true.

That's the other thing that you find most often with women. They're not really concerned about what's happened over the last four years. They really want to know what's going to happen in the next four years.

Politics gets me out of bed in the morning It's what really interests me. I'm a competitor, but I also feel like I'm contributing, whether it's working on health-care policy in the White House or out here in Chicago.

Let me tell you the story about Massachusetts under Governor Romney. It did fall to 47th out of 50 in jobs creation. Wages went down when they were going up in the rest of the country. He left his successor with debt and a deficit, and manufacturing jobs left that state at twice the rate as the rest of the country.