I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.

I think about people and events in terms of archetypes a lot.

One of the most dangerous things about Fox News isn't that it's right wing but that it's nihilistic. It takes away the capacity to believe in politics.

You can have very big local government. By big, I mean very engaged government. Do you measure it in terms of the number of laws? Number of employees? You could make arguments for either one. I tend to think the axis of the size of government is the wrong concern. But I do think that situating power more locally is a legitimate approach.

In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century.

You can't just provide power, you also need public education.

It's a lot harder to push forward things, like energy policy. There's a big dream out there about wind and solar power.