Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.

I still think the world is better off and safer without Saddam Hussein.

But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.

Because I happen to believe that the best policy solutions lie in the center ground, then I want to see, how does the center revitalize itself? How does it develop the policy agenda for the future? And how do we link up people who have the same basic ideas and attachments to the same basic values across the world?

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.

Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it.

Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.