As a husband and as a father of girls, I cannot imagine any woman in my family making the sacrifice of sanity required to run for office. The limited reward for public service cannot blunt the cost.

I've spent the better part of my career in politics and public policy working on and fighting for education reforms.

Sometime in the not too distant future, denying gays the right to marry will be viewed as historically corrupt - as corrupt as denying slaves their freedom.

Ah, political physics. Someone wins an election and, poof, they are a candidate for vice president. Ridiculous.

Politics only makes the difficult challenge of marriage even harder, with the demands of the job and the public spotlight it casts on a union.

Marketers know - no matter how deep the emotional connection or brand loyalty - when a product does not perform, rational thought overtakes emotion, and most consumers make a new choice.

If we cannot come together to pause, to respect our dead and the heroic lives of meaning they led, then ours is truly a civilization lost.

There are three opportunities that you have during a general election campaign where you can substantially move the needle of public opinion. One, is your convention speech; two, are the base; three, is the selection of your vice president.

Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. We have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights.

A troubled economy is always the sitting president's fault. It was when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, and when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by running against George W. Bush.

Presidential primary debates are an important part of our political process. But the media has wrested complete control from the parties and candidates over everything, including the number, the format, the qualifications, and the moderators. And they've become a circus.

Weary of wily politicians who say one thing and do another, voters and advocacy groups insist presidential contenders commit to the cause du jour in writing, but candidates are foolish to comply. Words matter.

Debt is a drag, a reality you may experience with every credit-card bill you open. But for a corporation or a government, it can be even more of a drag - on economic growth and job creation.

Unfortunately, in American politics there are no standards for shame.

I think that the press has a duty and an obligation to report on local government, state government, federal government - to be aggressive, to do its job. And its job is to report on whatever it's covering.

Sarah Palin is brilliant. She is a media magnet and a media magnate. She creates headlines and draws crowds wherever she goes, whether it's 98 degrees in the desert of Arizona or below freezing in the snow of Wisconsin.

I took a lot of heat from Republicans when I stepped out of John McCain's campaign after the 2008 primaries. I still supported McCain, and voted for him, but I just didn't want to be the tip of the spear attacking Obama.

For most of my life, I've considered myself a political centrist.

As history has repeatedly proven, one trade tariff begets another, then another - until you've got a full-blown trade war. No one ever wins, and consumers always get screwed.

Party switching has all the emotional edges and baggage of divorce.

The No Child Left Behind Act will be one of President Bush's enduring legacies. And it was engineered and inaugurated with a truly bipartisan coalition in Congress. Accountability, standards, and truly measuring student performance just makes sense. The only real debate about the law was and is whether or not it was adequately funded.

There's only one way we're going to change our political climate and ensure we establish some respect in our discourse. And that is to show there is a real price to pay for being a disrespectful partisan idiot.

Negativity drove me out of politics in the mid-Nineties.

When people see political ads, they think someone's lying to them.

America glories in its tradition of the self-made individual. Political candidates compete to be a friend to entrepreneurs, and policymakers, imagining the next Microsoft or Google, design laws to back the innovator in the garage.

Democrats love to criticize Republicans on guns, but they are generally mute when it comes to taking on Hollywood or the gaming industry.

Having been heavily involved in the planning of a couple of G.O.P. conventions, my view is, we should just scrap 'em. Cancel 'em. Just figure out an appropriate forum for the nominee to give an acceptance speech and be done with it.

Ronald Reagan was long thought to be the most conservative of Republicans. And by any standard today he is the most popular Republican in modern history. Yet he raised taxes 11 times, supported a ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks, and established amnesty for 3 million undocumented workers.

Rand Paul comes off like an academic stiff who wants to give us a lecture on American civics.

Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.

Advocacy groups and voters are not wrong to push candidates to declare their position clearly on policy issues. That is good citizenship. Hard questions should be asked of every candidate, every politician. And those public servants should be prepared to answer, but in their own words.

Voters crave authenticity.

Convention speeches are powerful tools to bend the curve of public opinion. George H. W. Bush's 1988 convention speech is a great example. His son's speech was also quite powerful.

A failure to act is a terrible, stunning legacy for any leader. But far worse when it is the president of the United States. And that's the point driven home by Romney's selection of Ryan, who dared to lead when Obama did not.

The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.

As a Republican, I never expected to be working with Hillary Clinton.

Contrary to conventional military and game theory, the most effective offense is sometimes a direct attack against your political opponent's greatest strength - not his weaknesses - to place him immediately on the defensive.

Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past.

Now personally, I think the president should golf every day and never have a press conference. I want the leader of the free world to be as stress-free as possible. And if golf helps fade the psychic heat from the job, by all means tee it up often, Mr. President.

Technology has had more of an impact on the presidency and how the presidency communicates than anything.

The GOP cannot expect to win the presidency in the future by simply relying on running up big numbers with white voters.

Immigration is the most explosive issue I've seen in my political career.

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

Marco Rubio is interesting because he checks so many boxes when you think about what a Republican nominee needs. He brings Florida, he's young, he's Hispanic, the Tea Party likes him. But that said, he's got issues, actually surprisingly, ironically, with Mexican-American voters.

To pull off successful attacks in debates, you have to execute with nuance and subtlety. It has to be artful.

Voters are looking for credibility and are wary of polish. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which candidate can more deftly read a teleprompter.

Debates require a lot of hard work and preparation. If you try to wing it, it shows.

Social Security and Medicare are necessary safety nets, but they are nearing insolvency as fewer pay in, more take out, and more take out more.

I think the press has an interest in communicating to its viewers or readers, and their viewers or readers drive profit for those news organizations, so I think those news organizations have a certain bias toward their own readers. Yeah, I think they are a special interest. Of course they are.

I don't think that the press in 2004 was any more unfair to Bush than they were to Kerry.