President Obama has offered a plan with 4 trillion dollars in debt reduction over a decade, with two and a half dollars of spending reductions for every one dollar of revenue increases, and tight controls on future spending. It's the kind of balanced approach proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.

If you come from a wealthy country with open borders, unless you seriously believe you can kill, imprison or occupy all your enemies, you have to make a world with more friends and fewer enemies - with more partners and fewer terrorists.

The future is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation.

No one who has lived through the second half of the 20th century could possibly be blind to the enormous impact of exchange programs on the future of countries.

Character is a journey, not a destination.

We must all be profoundly grateful for the magnificent achievements of our forbearers in this century. Yet perhaps in the daily press of events, in the clash of controversy, we don't see our own time for what it truly is - a new dawn for America.

I mean, when's the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running? I mean, he will have been a senator longer by the time he's inaugurated, but essentially once you start running for president full time you don't have time to do much else.