At his best, Obama promised to work with Republicans to reduce the deficit in a way that honors both individualism and community.

At the start of his second term, one wonders less about Obama's fitness than his willingness: Why doesn't he do more to build and maintain the relationships required to govern in era of polarization?

It's a deft trick to turn American exceptionalism into an exceptional political tactic.

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill.

With gridlock the norm, Congress's approval rating is below 10 percent and the public has lost faith in its national leadership.

Blending hard-bitten realism with long-view optimism, Obama said that every 20 or 30 years brings a new cycle of pessimism in America.

Although we were never pals and occasionally butted heads, my relationship with Clinton and his wife, Hillary, made me a better journalist.

President George W. Bush won reelection in 2004 largely because he was seen as comfortable in his own skin, while rival John Kerry was viewed as a flip-flopping opportunist.

Obama might do well to remember that his fast rise from the Illinois state Senate was due in large part to an uncanny ability to make friends and find mentors.

I'm hearing echoes of Bill Clinton, circa 1996, in President Obama's reelection rhetoric.

For a man who has compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt and the nation's challenges to those of the Gilded Age, Obama put forward a tepid agenda.

It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen.

SUCCESS DEFINITION-- WHEN OUR SIGNATURE CHANGES TO AUTOGRAPH ,this marks the success.

What we feed our mind becomes the material with which we build our life.

There was this long lovely dancer in a little club downtown, love to watch her do her stuff.

I'm a big fan of domino masks, like Zorro, or Robin. You could put a domino mask on anything, and it becomes a superhero. You put a domino mask on a milkman, and he becomes, like, Super Milkman.

To know how to choose a path with heart is to learn how to follow intuitive feeling. Logic can tell you superficially where a path might lead to, but it cannot judge whether your heart will be in it.

It's impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James - and many more - without wanting to write, however entirely different one's writing will be.

In the crazy world of touring, if something gets stuck at customs, I can do a show with just my amp!

If you're hurting, you need to help somebody else ease their hurt. If you're in pain, help somebody else's pain.

There is only one road to follow, that of analysis of the basic elements in order to arrive ultimately at an adequate graphic expression.