Here is a needle President Obama needs to thread if he chooses a ninth. The nominee would need to be so strongly qualified that he or she would be hard to reject. The person must also be willing to be nominated even though leading Senate Republicans have said they will not consider anyone the president names.

I see parallels between Karachi and the cities that I was familiar with: a very different place, but in terms of its human stories not really very different at all. That was what excited me about the place - that it was so complex, as difficult to me as an outsider and yet so human in a way that was ultimately very familiar.

The Republican critique here is that Russia is in a weak situation, but has been emboldened by a weak response from the United States, that in Ukraine, that in other places, the United States has not stepped forward.

[Identity liberalism] is about recognition and self-definition. It's narcissistic. It's isolating. It looks within. And it also makes two contradictory claims on people.

Hillary Clinton, [Democrats] say, leads the popular vote by two million, and a shift of a few votes in a few states would have won the election.

Those are the liberals who don't want to win. Those are the liberals who are in love with noble defeats, and I'm sick and tired of noble defeats.

Ever since [Ronald] Reagan, they've been able to capture the message and an understanding - or persuade people of a certain understanding of what the nation is about and what's good for it.