Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.

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

I think a lot of the reason people are attracted to the Keystone pipeline is because at least we're doing something. There's a fear that society will collapse if it's not acting. To contrast those actions with other actions is important in making it feel plausible. Maybe we must have the size of the dream meet the size of the threat.

Oftentimes people get it wrong when they say we need to educate voters first and then give them power. I tend to favor giving them power first.

There's a tendency, especially among academics, to see politics as deeply dirty and deeply egotistical.

A lot of politics plays at the level of myth, and if you understand that, then you feel like you have access to the secret language of 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.