My only thought about Margaret Thatcher is the same one I had about Ronald Reagan. I hated a lot of what they did, but once in a while a country just needs a change.

Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.

Once you're done being president, you tend to want to defend your record more than plumb your inner feelings. I find it hard to imagine Obama going home at night and writing sensitive, introspective journal entries about his meeting with John Boehner.

If immigration reform passes, it'll be a big victory for sanity - nobody really believes it's healthy for a country to have millions and millions of undocumented noncitizens living in the shadows. But it'll also be a sign that the Republican Party has gotten tired of letting the Tea Party push it around.

To be honest, I haven't seen much serious budget planning since the Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 elections and grabbed onto the Senate filibuster. It's not the White House's fault that John Boehner couldn't deliver on a bigger deal.

I am prepared to admit that when it comes to dealing with the House and Senate leaders, Obama is terrible. But he's great with the public. Which hates the House and Senate as much as he does.

For years I've been hearing 20-somethings say they don't expect Social Security to be around when they hit 65. Eventually, I came to realize that they really mean that they just don't expect to be 65. Or 40. Neither did I, when I was 22.

I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with politicians who've done something morally reprehensible but not indictable, yet still think they should be able to stay in office. The office isn't a 'right.' It's a kind of loan.

One line I'd draw would be on raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare. It sounds fair, since people are living longer. But it isn't. Lower income workers are the ones who find it hardest to keep working after 65. And they'll get penalized with lower benefits.

In college, the guys aren't worrying about whether they'll be able to pursue their career dreams and still have kids.

Once when I was working for the Daily News, I was summoned back to work from vacation because Donald Trump announced he was getting a divorce.

I picked up my college copy of 'The Great Gatsby' in an attempt to recover from the movie and was interested to find out what I'd underlined. The answer was basically: everything.

I grew up in one of the most socially conservative neighborhoods in Ohio, and my parents were traditional Catholics. But in her old age, my mother got her home health care from a guy who was gay, who was wonderful to her. Before she died, she rode a float in the Cincinnati Gay Pride Parade.

Well, it'd certainly be fascinating if we discovered that gays were better at being married than heterosexuals are. Talk about irony.

Conservatives were sure that if you eliminated welfare for single moms, it would eliminate - or at lease greatly reduce - single motherhood. So in 1996 we had welfare reform. Did not change the trend in the least. Soon half of all babies will be born out of wedlock.

I'm being driven crazy by people who are obsessed with limiting the scope of government, but feel perfectly free to demand that government get involved in women's most personal choices.

Whenever you bring up women's internal workings, guys want to change the subject. Unless, of course, they're trying to change the laws.

You know, I have a lot of books on my iPad, but when I try to read them, I find myself wandering off to play games. Those are books I'm interested in. I can't imagine what would have happened to me in college if my biology class had been on the same computer as 'Words With Friends' and 'Doom.'

I did some research once on the way people in the past imagined the year 2000. They tended to picture the things they already had getting more sophisticated - flying cars, self-cleaning windows. And the folks in the early 1900s had a wildly optimistic estimate of the future of pneumatic tubes.

Non-crazy gun advocates - the ones who aren't stockpiling in preparation for a zombie invasion - don't like the idea of expanding background checks because they think it'll be a lot more paperwork. And it probably would make it more difficult to sell guns at, say, a flea market.

The Tea Party people say they're angry about socialism, but maybe they're really angry about capitalism. If there's a sense of being looked down upon, it's that sense of failure that's built into a system that assures everyone they can make it to the top, but then reserves the top for only a tiny fraction of the strivers.

When people say this isn't the America they grew up in, they're right. Nobody gets to grow old in the America they grew up in.

The whole student loan thing drives me completely nuts. If it wasn't possible for 18-year-olds to sign themselves up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt in order to pay their college bills, the state governments wouldn't have found it so politically easy to cut taxpayer support for public colleges and universities.

Back in the '70s when my friends in California were at Berkeley, in-state tuition was around $700 a year.

There's more student debt than credit card debt! Everywhere I go, I run into young people trying to build careers while they keep shelling out money on their education loans. If the economy is looking for a new generation of home-buyers, I can't imagine they'll get it from these folks.

One very clear memory I have of college is that I never learned anything in the big lectures. I have a feeling I'd have done even worse if they'd been on a laptop screen.

I used to like John McCain, too, but I must admit that was because he was bucking his party to do things I agreed with. I would not have had that reaction if, say, Bernie Sanders decided to rebel out of principle and support privatizing Social Security.

I admired the way McCain worked on campaign finance reform. I admired the way Nancy Pelosi stiffened the Democrats' spine during the health care debate. I admire the way Barack Obama has raised a dog in the White House without ever putting it on the roof of the car for a vacation drive.

I don't think the folks in the low-tax states really want to go into a fairness discussion. Residents of Connecticut and New York would love to remind them how much they pay in federal taxes to support programs for Mississippi and South Dakota.

I kind of think that if you show conspiracy theorists a photo of the dead Bin Laden they will come up with an explanation for why it's really a Photoshopped picture of Bin Laden asleep. Or his dead cousin Fred. Donald Trump apparently believes that Bin Laden is dead, so that ought to be enough for the Middle East.

I used to have a sort of soft spot for Huckabee. He seemed to have a genuinely saintly streak, which caused him to defend illegal immigrants and give pardons to criminals who were perhaps a little less rehabilitated than he had imagined.

There's always been that theory that if a candidate can't run a decent campaign, he probably can't run a decent presidency. That might be true, although sadly I must admit that running a brilliant campaign does not translate into running a brilliant White House.

Once you taste the sweet honey, you want more of that.

I don't have superstitions because I think sometimes they work against you because, if something happens to disturb them, you feel nervous.

It's so rewarding to succeed in what you like to do that you don't really think about what you have to give up.

I think I'm always nervous, even if I play not on the center court.

I just thought at Wimbledon I was very nervous.

I always play with a very high ponytail so that my hair doesn't bother me.

Sometimes when you go into the match, you want it so badly. I think sometimes is tricky. It makes you a little bit, like, tense and nervous.

I was about three years old when I started playing in Venezuela with my two older brothers. They're 12 and 11 years older, so I was always the little one.

The best thing is being part of history and achieving something you've dreamed of.

I think people have this love-hate relationship with tennis. I also feel like that.

I go for my shots with no regrets, even if I play to the fence.

I didn't play juniors, really. I only played Roland Garros juniors and maybe some European tournaments.

When you're tired, you say, 'Hey, I need to rest from tennis or something.'

People only see two hours of a tennis match where you're fighting and running and sometimes getting upset. There's a lot more than those two hours. Going out there and playing is actually the easy part.

I started in a very small tennis club in a South American country where I never thought about becoming the best tennis player.

I was always following my brothers. If my brothers hadn't played, I never would have picked up a racket. Tennis isn't the most popular sport in Venezuela.

I moved to Spain, and at all the tournaments I'd play, I would be really good in my age. That made me realize that I could be a pro.

I let my racket do the talking.