If you look at what's happened to the stock market, if you look at what's happened to housing values, if you look at what's happened to bank loan portfolios because the value of their other assets that they've already issued loans against were going down, there was a pretty good argument for trying to pass something at about this level of investment with the divisions as they were - unemployment, food stamps, and tax cuts, aid to education and healthcare, and job creation.

The new rage is to say that the government is the cause of all our problems, and if only we had no government, we'd have no problems. I can tell you, that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense.

You can't blame the administration and the Republicans for taking us back to deficits, for spending the Social Security surplus and assaulting the environment. That's what they promised to do in the last election.

India.. a perfectly wonderful country, may have been motivated by a lack of self-esteem.

I did attempt to find out if there were any secret government documents that revealed things. If there were, they were concealed from me too. And if there were, well I wouldn't be the first American president that underlings have lied to, or that career bureaucrats have waited out. But there may be some career person sitting around somewhere, hiding these dark secrets, even from elected presidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me...and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you I did (chuckling) try to find out.

First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible.

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election.