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.

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.

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.

If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America, I plead guilty.

The past stands in the path of the future, knowing it will be crushed.

You can't take away something she never fully had. She may have been promised to me, but my heart will never belong to her!

All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.

I have the perfect simplified tax form for government. Why don't they just print our money with a return address on it?

Looking back in retrospect, there were some great moments working with some great people, ... I don't know quite how to put it into words. I don't look at it quite the same way other people do.

God will not make himself manifest to cowards

A barrier to communication is something that keeps meanings from meeting.

You are the fountain of the sun. I'm the shadow of a willow. You fall upon my forehead. I melt. You slip into my heart. It spills open. You surround me with such sweetness. I make it my home.

Miracles are God's coups d'etat.

A manager of people knows that in this stable state it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake.