For all its faults, it is partisanship - based on core principles- that clarifies our debates, that prevents one party from straying too far from the mainstream and that constantly refreshes our politics with new ideas and new leaders.

Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist.

Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills.

Only business can build a low-carbon economy. Business is all about seeing ideas and growing them. Businesses have the resources, the people, the technical skills to make things happen - and they have the channels to market

Without any coherent international blueprint the White House has bombed its way around the globe, while dropping troops far and wide for ill-defined peacemaking duties. This policy has gutted the American military which now must be rebuilt.

Does life have any meaningful purpose?

American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.