A few years ago, (Barack Obama) would have been getting us coffee.

The first thing I had to start with was, you know, we don't have a war. We don't have a depression, we don't have a Cold War.

It takes a long time to turn a big country around. Just be of good cheer and keep working on it.

The Kyoto Treaty wasn't perfect, but we signed it, in fact, helped to draft it. And I'm very proud of it, it was the world's first commitment to doing something comprehensive on greenhouse gases and trying to reduce global warming before we do irreversible damage to many civilizations around the world.

We should pass a flex time law that allows employees to take their overtime pay in money or in time off, depending on what's better for their family.

I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

When I first came to Washington in the 1960s, even at the height of the Vietnam War, until the end there in '68 there was a certain climate of cooperation. And then in the late sixties and in through the seventies, politics began getting more mean. And then from the eighties on it seemed to be institutionalized, this personal attack business. And I just hate it.