People read the Tribune or the Sun-Times, you know, way back when the Tribune was a right-wing paper.It's always been somewhat that way. We take 10, 20 years in the 50s and 60s as kind of the norm, when there was this sort of bi-partisan parent consensus.

I don't think [Mitt] Romney can sit there and wait to win because perhaps people are disappointed with President [Barack] Obama.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments.

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.

American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

The repealing and replacing of Obamacare is very complicated. It is what a White House and congressional leadership, serious White House and serious congressional leadership, should meet on and work on and figure out a strategy of, and it may work and it may not. Obviously not every administration gets things through, even when they have much larger majorities in congress and a much larger popular vote than Donald Trump had.

That's always been the case in America; there's been a big spectrum in how much people are interested in American politics.