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It's Just A Lot Safer To Be An Incumbent. So I Think They Have Used The Campaign Finance Reforms. They Have Passed Laws That Will Help Themselves Stay In Office. And I Think That's One Of The Flaws That We Do Have In The System.

-David Brooks

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It's Just A Lot

David Brooks

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It's Just A Lot Safer To Be An Incumbent. So I Think They Have Used The Campaign Finance Reforms. They Have Passed Laws That Will Help Themselves Stay In Office. And I Think That's One Of The Flaws That We Do Have In The System.

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If You're Running A Successful Administration, Then You're Loyal To People Who Are Basically Good Who Make A Mistake. And That Seems To Be Essential For Any Organization. And It Should Be Essential If This Were A Normal Administration, Rather Than A Fiefdom, Where Everybody Simply Tries To Give Donald Trump A Good Headline Every Day.

Donald Trump Is This Whirling Dervish Of Chaos. He Picked A Fight With Mexico. Germany Is Not Far Behind. He Will Pick A Fight With Them. He Will Pick A Fight With China, Which Would Be Truly Cataclysmic.

I Think That It's An Arguable Position, Whether With Hamas And Isis Around, Whether There Should Be A Palestinian State, But It's A Defensible Position, Given The Current Circumstances.

Much Of Life Is About Failure, Whether We Acknowledge It Or Not, And Your Destiny Is Profoundly Shaped By How Effectively You Learn From And Adapt To Failure.

I Learned I'm Not A Science Writer. I'm Not Very Good At Describing How Something Is Happening. I Try To Describe "so What?"

A Wise Soul Once Declared That The Ultimate Power Of The Writer Is That He Has The Choice Of Whom He Wants To Be Co-opted By.

I've Come To Think That Flourishing Consists Of Putting Yourself In Situations In Which You Lose Self-consciousness And Become Fused With Other People, Experiences, Or Tasks.

I Have Seen [betsy Devos] Present A Few Times. I Don't Really Know Her. But I Have Seen Her Present On Education Policy, And She's Not A Stupid Person.

I Came To The Conclusion Is That We Have A Very Shallow View Of Human Nature In The Policy World. We're Really Good At Talking About Material Things, Really Bad At Talking About Emotions, Really Good At Stuff We Can Count, Really Bad At The Deeper Stuff That Actually Drives Behavior.

People Generally Overestimate How Distinct Their Lives Are, So The Commonalities Seemed To Them Like A Series Of Miracles.

I Want To Try To Make Big Films That Hopefully Connect With People.

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Certainly, The Country Can't Have Two Presidents At Once, So The Tradition Has Been To Hang Back If You're The President-elect And Wait For Your Time In Office. [donald] Trump Is Not A Hang-back Kind Of Guy.

People Have Been Raised In A Morality That Says, "if It Feels All Right For You, It's Probably Ok."

We Live In A Culture Of A Big Me. We're Encouraged - We Raise Our Kids To Think How Great They Are, Where We Have To Market Ourselves To Get Through Life. We're In Social Media, Where We Broadcast Highlight - Highlight Reels Of Our Own Lives On Facebook.

People Who Give Money In Large Amount In Politics Are Basically Not Altruistic. They Have Some Issue. They Have Some Interest. It May Be World Peace. It May Be Preserving Carried Interest. But It's Not Altruistic.

What's Interesting About The Trump Administration Is How Bitterly Divided They Are In Their Attitudes Towards Putin.

Nonetheless, So Whether It's Unconstitutional Or Not [for Judges To Overruling Presidents], I Leave To Others.

Unconstitutional

Every Time Kellyanne Conway Goes On Tv, There's Another Fight With Whoever's Interviewing Her That Particular Day.

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Donald Trump Is Sort Of An Orwellian Figure, An Authoritarian Figure Who Is Twisting Words In An Orwellian Manner, "1984," To Exercise Power And Control People's Minds, Or Is He A 5-year-old Who Has An Ego That Needs To Be Fed, And The Universe Has To Warp Around His Ego Needs So He Can Feel Good About Himself, And Everybody Has To Produce Photos To Make The Monarch Feel Like He's Made Of Gold.

Jim Stavridis Is The Former Nato Commander Who Is Sometimes On People's Lists, Also Very Plausible, Self-possessed, Someone With Sobriety.

People Want Reality That Tells Them How Right They Are All The Time.

The Ugliness Can Sometimes Be Super Ugly, But Also A Warning Sign Of Something Down Below.

[mitch Daniels] Was Not A Bad Governor. He Could Be Playful, But - Or Communicator.i'm Just Saying It Will - I Think Will Be - Every Candidate Comes Into The White House, Assuming If [hillary Clinton] Wins, Or If She Does Win, With Strengths And Weaknesses. This Will Be A Weakness, Because This Was Such An Easy Moment To Show Some Heart.

For Us Going Forward, It's To Not Reverse The Dynamism Of American Society And The Diversity. It's To Pay Attention To The People Who Are Being Ruined By It, And So This Doesn't Happen Again.

It’s Not That Egypt Doesn’t Have A Recipe For A Democratic Transition. It Seems To Lack Even The Basic Mental Ingredients.

The Roots Of Great Innovation Are Never Just In The Technology Itself. They Are Always In The Wider Historical Context. They Require New Ways Of Seeing. As Einstein Put It, 'the Significant Problems We Face Cannot Be Solved At The Same Level Of Thinking We Were At When We Created Them.'

If You Know That Most Processing Is Below The Level Of Awareness, You Learn The Value Of Sleep. You're Brain Is Working On The Problem Anyway.

I Happen To Think Most People Go Into Government Do It For The Right Reasons And They Really Do Things As They See Them On The Merits Of The Issues.

The Thing That Should Most Concern Us Is A Shift In American Foreign Policy. We Have Had A Bipartisan Belief In American Foreign Policy Based On The Post-world War Ii Institutions That Believed In Democratic Global World, Which Russia And The Soviet Union Was Often Seen As Hostile To. And Most Republicans And Democrats Have Always Basically Believed In This World Order. Donald Trump And Vladimir Putin And Maybe Marine Le Pen Do Not Agree With This Basic Structure Of The World.

I Don't Know If I'm Sexist, Though I Have Not Paid Much Attention To The Women's Bracket.

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You Have A Country That Is 20 Percent Liberal, 40 Percent Conservative. You Have A Country Where Maybe 22 Percent Have Faith In Government. If You're A Liberal, It's Just Going To Be Tough. And You Should Just Expect That. And It's Tough For People On The Right, Too, Because They Don't Get What They Want Either If You're, Say, A Libertarian. So, You Have Got The Country Sort Of Against You. And, Nevertheless, You Have A President.

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Freedom Without Structure Is Its Own Slavery.

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Donald Trump's Being Authentic To What He Ran On And What Got Elected.

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The Reason The Betsy Devos Case Was The Centerpiece Case For The Democrats Wasn't About Her Weakness As A Knowledgeable Person On Education Policy.

Knowledgeable Person

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The Gun Becomes This Psychological Totem, This Thing Of Who I Am. And It's Almost As If Using The Gun Is Going To Be The Thing That's Going To Be My Expression Of How I Make A Difference In The World.

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I Think Globalization Has Been Really Good For America.

Trade Has Suddenly Become Massively Unpopular. I Think That's Massively Unjust. I Think Free Trade Has Been Wonderful For America On Balance.

[betsy Devos] Is Quite A Smart Person, Capable, Pretty Sophisticated In Subtle Thought. And So To Me, That Puts Her In The Realm Of Policy. But We're In A Climate Where, As Today, She Tries To Visit A School, And She Can't Even Do That Because Protesters Are Blocking That.

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Highly Educated Young People Are Tutored, Taught And Monitored In All Aspects Of Their Lives, Except The Most Important, Which Is Character Building. When It Comes To This, Most Universities Leave Them Alone.

Civility Is The Natural State For People Who Know How Limited Their Own Individual Powers Are And Know, Too, That They Need The Conversation.

Individual Power

Self-actualization Is What Educated Existence Is All About. For Members Of The Educated Class, Life Is One Long Graduate School. When They Die, God Meets Them At The Gates Of Heaven, Totes Up How Many Fields Of Self-expression They Have Mastered, And Then Hands Them A Divine Diploma And Lets Them In.

It’s Worth Noting That You Can Devote Your Life To Community Service And Be A Total Schmuck. You Can Spend Your Life On Wall Street And Be A Hero

The Core Threat To Democracy Is Not In The White House, It's The [bush] Haters Themselves.

Donald Trump's World View Is That It's A Dangerous, Miserable Place, People Are Out To Get Him, And He Needs To Strike Them First.

Through American History, We Have Had Populist Movements That Often, Often, Often Have This Ugly Racial Element. But, Often, There Are Warning Signs Of Some Deeper Social And Economic Problem.

Those Cultural Wars, Sexual Revolution Issues Are Fading From The Scene, And The Coming Generation Has Basically Settled Them.

I Do Think British And American Politics Rhyme. They Go In Cycles. They Go In Thatcher-reagan Cycles, Blair-clinton Cycles.

I Want To Make Big Films. That's Always Been My Ambition.

If You Grow Up In A Home Where Actions Don't Lead To Predictable Consequences, You Don't Develop Strategies To Control Your Impulses.

Emotion Is The Foundation Of Reason.

Donald Trump Just Needs The Ego Fed All The Time.

It’s Only Useful To Ask, What Wisdom Have You Learned From Your Misjudgments That Will Help You Going Forward?

Most People Don't Form A Self And Then Lead A Life. They Are Called By A Problem, And The Self Is Constructed Gradually By Their Calling.

I Don't Blame The Democrats For Fighting. They Have Got A Very Energized Base. And There Is A Lot To Complain About A Lot Of These Nominees. But I Think, If You Are Actually Going To Turn Someone Down From A President's [donald Trump] Own Cabinet, It Better Be A Lot More Egregious Than The Cases We Have Seen.

I Am Not A Jew For Jesus But I Am Definitely A Jew For Christmas. Christmas Is One Of The Best Things You Christians Have Given Us, Along With Mac And Cheese, Bono, Croquet And Politeness.

I'm Not The Most Emotionally Attuned Guy In The World. My Wife Says That Me Writing About Emotion Is Like Gandhi Writing About Gluttony.

Bill Clinton Pandered By Telling You What You Wanted To Hear. John Kerry Panders By Never Telling You What You Don't Want To Hear. This Is Negative Pandering; He Talks A Lot Without Really Ruling Anything Out So You Can Draw Your Own Conclusions.....kerry Has Been Talking For Years, And Yet Such Is The Thicket Of His Verbiage That He Has Achieved Almost Complete Strategic Ambiguity.

Marital Happiness Is Far More Important Than Anything Else In Determining Personal Well-being.

The Republicans In Congress, They Believe In Ronald Reagan's Republican Party, Not Donald Trump Republican Party Or Steve Bannon's Republican Party.

It's Hard To Imagine A Party That Is Not Corrupted By Hatred.

The Madman Theory Is That You Can Be A Successful Deterrer If You - If They Think You Could Be Crazy. And So I Think It Can Be Very Effective, So Long As You're Not Actually Crazy.

Economists Sometimes Do Try To Reduce Behavior To Law-like Predictability. But People Respond Differently To Different Primes, To Different Contexts Even From One Moment To The Next. We Possess Multiple Selves That Are Aroused By Different Circumstances.

We Actually Have To Have A Government. We Have To Have People Confirmed And Put Into Office.

It's A Completely Irrational Decision To Drop Out Of School.

Some People Think Humility Is Thinking Lowly Of Yourself. Some People Think It's Not Thinking About Yourself. But, To Me, The Best Definition Of Humility Is Radical Self-awareness From A Distance, Seeing Themselves From A Distance And Saying, What's My Problem?

Thinking About You

Memo To Young Journalists: Democratic Victories Are Always Ascribed To Hope; Republican Ones To Rage.

Basically, Less Educated Or High School-educated Whites Are Going To Donald Trump. It Doesn't Matter What The Guy Does. And College-educated Going To Hillary Clinton.

Populists Love Rich People. They Just Hate Professionals.

We Have Rapidly Increasing Technology, Which Is Making Life Very Good For People Who Are Good At Using Words, And Not So Good For People Who Are Not Good At Using Words.

It's Impossible For One Person To Think Of Everything.

To Explain The Unknown By The Known Is A Logical Procedure; To Explain The Known By The Unknown Is A Form Of Theological Lunacy.

If Donald Trump Is Just Tweeting About A Union Guy, Then He's Just Being The Bully We Have Seen. But If He Uses The Power Of The Presidency To Back Up Some Of Those Tweets And He's Really, Really Coming Down With A Hammer On People He Doesn't Like Using The Power Of The Presidency, Then We're Seeing Something Very New And Very Different.

Learning Was A By-product Of Her Search For Pleasure

Hillary Clinton Continues To Say Donald Trump's Unacceptable, He Doesn't Have The Character To Be President. He Is Saying - Continues Saying She Needs To Be In Prison.

With A Normal President Like President [barack] Obama, He Says A Word, And That's Because There Has Been Some Thought That He's Done And There Had Been Policy Papers And There's Been Aides And There's Been Advisers And Then There Is A Connection To An Actual Set Of Policies. And So, The Words Like Have Roots Into Actual Stuff.

Donald Trump Didn't Emerge From The Orthodoxy Of The Republican Party. And So There's Going To Be Bigger Differences Than Normal.

I Think The Twenty-first Century Happened, Basically. That This Century Started On 9/11. And Basically, It's Been A Century Of Counter Reaction To Globalization And The Meritocracy. And A Good Century For 72 Nations Have Gotten More Authoritarian. We've Had Brexit. We Have Le Pen Rising In France. We've Just Got A Lot Of These Types All Around The World. And The People Who Are Suffering From Globalization And The Meritocracy Are Saying, "no More. You Know, We Get A Voice Too."

Two Terrible Behaviors Don't Make A Good Behavior.

I'm Beginning To Think [ted] Cruz Had A Good Convention, That If [donald] Trump Goes Down, Cruz Is Pretty Well Positioned To Be The Republican Major Figure In Four, Six Or Even Within Two Years.

I Could Tell You That When You Have Trouble Making Up Your Mind About Something, Tell Yourself You'll Settle It By Flipping A Coin. But Don't Go By How The Coin Flips; Go By Your Emotional Reaction To The Coin Flip. Are You Happy Or Sad It Came Up Heads Or Tails?

I Can't Imagine That Being In The Trump Cabinet Will Be A Very Important Job. I Do Think This Will Be A White House-run Administration With A Teeny-tiny Group Of People Surrounding Him, Including His Family Maybe.

What's Sort Of Remarkable Is That, Especially In The Israel And The Russia Cases, You Have Got A U.s. Citizen, Donald Trump, Siding With A Foreign Leader Against The U.s. President. There Is A Reason Why President-elects Have Tried To Remain Mute During Their Transitional Periods, Relatively, Because You Just Don't Want To Be For Somebody - Some Other Country Against Your Own Government, And Especially When You're About To Take The Helm Of That Government.

You Have To Have A Plan, Or Else You're Just Creating A Recipe For Chaos.

It’s Easy To See Why Politicians Would Be Drawn To The Populist Pose. First, It Makes Everything So Simple. The Economic Crisis Was Caused By A Complex Web Of Factors, Including Global Imbalances Caused By The Rise Of China. But With The Populist Narrative, You Can Just Blame Goldman Sachs.

I Take A Benign View Of Digital Connectedness. I Notice In Most Young People's Lives, Facebook And Such Doesn't Replace Normal Dating Or Hanging Out, It Just Facilitates It.

There Is The English Language And Then There's The Trump Language.

English Language

I Do Think Donald Trump Is A Fundamentally Unstabilizing Force And That The People Who Swore To Uphold The Constitution Are Going To Have To Take Some Measures At Some Point.

I Would Have Swapped Out Donald Trump's Frontal Cortex For Somebody Else's For A Little More Self-control.

If You Thought Donald Trump Was Going To Be Swallowed Up By The Conventional Republican Party Or By Washington, You Were Wrong.

I Think Donald Trump Is Going To Find It Very Hard To Do The Kind Of Massive Change He Wants.

We Still Are America Though. We're Still A Country That Is A Country Of Social Mobility. We're Still A Country Of Immigrants. We're Still A Country With Common Ancestors. And Reviving The Civics Of America And The Idea That We're Going To Be United, At Least Not Right Now, But In Some Common Future, And Talking In That Hopeful Way That Martin Luther King Did, That Abraham Lincoln Did, Seems To Me That's The Way.

You Have Got To Be Loyal To People Beneath You.

Often, I Go And See Films Where I Can See The Beats Coming. So, If I Read Something Where I Don't See The Beats Coming And It Takes Me Somewhere Unexpected, That's A Great Thing To Build Upon.

The People Who Really Have Character Make Deep, Unshakable Connections To Something Outside Themselves.

If I Were Donald Trump, I Would Definitely Not Pick Mitt Romney Because It's Very Easy For Mitt Romney To Have Have A Separate Foreign Policy Operatus In The State Department That Would Run A Dissenting Foreign Policy From The White House Foreign Policy. There, I Think The Populist America-first Foreign Policy Of Donald Trump Does Run Against A Potential Rival.

It's Just A Lot Safer To Be An Incumbent. So I Think They Have Used The Campaign Finance Reforms. They Have Passed Laws That Will Help Themselves Stay In Office. And I Think That's One Of The Flaws That We Do Have In The System.

What You Hear In Focus Groups And Conversations, People Will Give You 20 Minutes Of Rage About How The Borders Are Out Of Control. But Then You Start Saying, Practically, What Are We Going To Do About It? What Are We Going To Do About The 11 Million Here? What Are We Going To Do To Get Some Workers We Need For The Farms? Then People Start Having A Normal Conversation.

The Most Interesting Thing Is That The White House Staff And The People Under Donald Trump, At Least Some Portion Of Them, Some Large Portion Of Them, Seem To Have Turned Against Donald Trump.

Who Could Have Predicted This, That The Presidency Is Kind Of A Hard Job? Nobody Knew That. I Also Like The Fact That Trump Is A Detail-oriented Person. I Find His Interviews Amazing. He's Actually Kind Of Remarkably Candid.

It's Hard For Parents Just To Measure Schools.

Fundamentalism Is Still On The March.

If You Do Something Really Cognitively Demanding, Like Buying Furniture, It Turns Out Buying Furniture Is One Of The Most Difficult Things We Do. Go Into A Furniture Store And Look At A Sofa.

[donald Trump] Will Be The One On Offense. He Will Be The One Serving Volleys, And It May Be Some Weird Stuff About The Russians, But He Will Be Controlling Things A Little More Than He Probably Did Over The Last Two Weeks.

I Think The Voters Who Voted For Donald Trump Certainly Are Willing To Tolerate A Lot Of Ugliness, But Maybe, If You're In Desperate Circumstances, Or You Think America Is Deeply In Trouble, You're Willing To Tolerate That Without Necessarily Liking It.

The Policies Of The Democratic Party Have Always Been In Cultural Consonance With The Culture Of The Working Class. And, Somehow, They Missed That.

The Government Is Supposed To Provide A Level Playing Field Where People Can Compete Fairly. It's Not Supposed To Cut Deals With One Company Or Another To Do So.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin And Marine Le Pen Seem To Have No Respect For The Institutions That Were Created After World War Ii, And They See A Potential Alliance Of Populists Around The World Who Would Fight Islam And Restore A Certain Semblance Of Traditional Values.

Plunder Is Morally Wrong. It Ruins Your Credibility.

[betsy Devos] Does Care About Charter Schools, Which Are Public Schools. She Does Care About Choice, Which Is A Perfectly Legitimate Thing To Care About. It's Because It's The One Issue Where The Democratic Donor Base Was Really Energized, Which Was The Teacher Unions.

I Wasn't Born With A Tie Or With Mark Shields Stapled To My Left Hip. I Have Another Life.

Your Dvd Collection Is Organized, And So Is Your Walk-in Closet. Your Car Is Clean And Vacuumed, Your Frequently Dialed Numbers Are Programmed Into Your Cordless Phone, Your Telephone Plan Is Suited To Your Needs, And Your Various Gizmos Interact Without Conflict. Your Spouse Is Athletic, Your Kids Are Bright, Your Job Is Rewarding, Your Promotions Are Inevitable, Everywhere You Need To Be Comes With Its Own Accessible Parking. You Look Great In Casual Slacks.

Most Poor People In America Are White. The Family Breakdown Issue Is An Issue That Crosses All Sorts Of Racial Lines. High School Dropout Issues. But Because Of The Flow Of Events Which Involve The Racial Component, We've Sometimes Confused Racial Issues With Other Issues Which Are Trans-racial.

It's Almost Inherent, But I'm A Massive Stanley Kubrick Fan. I'm A Big Admirer Of What Guys Like Christopher Nolan Have Been Able To Do. For Me, To Be Able To Try To Make Big Films That Reach A Lot Of People, And That Hopefully Have Something To Say, Is A Lofty Goal, But That's My Goal.

The Party Cannot Be Competitive Nationally Unless It's Competitive In California, Oregon, Washington, New England, Pennsylvania, Along The Coasts. And The Problem For The Party Is, You Can't Get There From Here. You Can't Start Out Where The Current Republicans Are And Win Back Those Places. To Me, What You Have To Do Is Create A Different Republican Party That Can Win In Those Places.

Putin's An Egomaniac, So There Are Two Ways He Can Process His Ego Mania. He Can Say, "oh, I Stood Up To The U.s.," Or, "hey, I'm Essential To The World Order."

This Death Cult Has No Reason And Is Beyond Negotiation. This Is What Makes It So Frightening. This Is What Causes So Many To Engage In A Sort Of Mental Diversion. They Don't Want To Confront This Horror. So They Rush Off In Search Of More Comprehensible Things To Hate.

I Think As We Interpret Him And Frankly As The World Learns To Interpret Donald Trump, Are These Just Words That Are Enigmatic Things Floating On Air Or Are They Actually Shifts In Policy And Will They Change Moment By Moment, Day By Day Without Any Underlying Connection To The Actual Stuff Of Governance? I Don't Know.

My Suv, Assuming Hummer Comes Out With A Model For Those Who Find The Current Ones Too Cramped, Will Look Something Like The Louisiana Superdome On Wheels. It'll Guzzle So Much Gas As I Walk Out To My Driveway There Will Be Squads Of Saudi Princes Gaping And Applauding. It'll Come, When I Buy It, With Little Hondas And Mazdas Already Embedded In The Front Grillwork.

The Key Factor Separating Geniuses From The Merely Accomplished Is Not A Divine Spark. It's Not I.q., A Generally Bad Predictor Of Success, Even In Realms Like Chess. Instead, It's Deliberate Practice. Top Performers Spend More Hours (many More Hours) Rigorously Practicing Their Craft.

On The Larger Issue Of The Travel Ban, Our Friend Charles Krauthammer Of The Washington Post I Think Put It Pretty Well. I'm Not Sure It's Illegal, But It's Extremely Stupid.

There Certainly Is A Pattern Of Administrations That Have Good Transitions, George W. Bush To Barack Obama, And Administrations That Have Really Bad Transitions, I Would Say Dwight Eisenhower To John F. Kennedy. I Would Say This Is Beginning To Look Like A Bad Transition, From Barack Obama To Donald Trump As They Begin To Argue Even At The Presidential Level, Which Is More Or Less Unprecedented.

The Public Is Not Only Shifting From Left To Right. Every Single Idea Associated With The Educated Class Has Grown More Unpopular Over The Past Year. . . . A Year Ago, The Obama Supporters Were The Passionate Ones. Now The Tea Party Brigades Have All The Intensity.

The Things That Make Them Similar - Their Machismo, Their Expansionary Braggadocio - Is Going To Turn Them I Think Into Bitter And Dangerous Enemies. We Will Look Back On This Moment Where We Thought Vladimir Putin And Donald Trump Were Sort Of Close As A Moment Of Bitter Irony, When They Get Into A Schoolyard Display Against Each Other, Amping Up Each Other's Worst Tendencies And Putting The Two Countries In Some Sort Of Scary Position.

I Think The Democrats Are Right To Protest, But I Don't Think Jeff Sessions Is So Far Out Of The Range Of Normalcy That He Shouldn't Be Confirmed.

Tim Kaine Has Been Obviously A Governor. He's Been A Senator. He's One Of The Smartest Rising Stars In The Democratic Party. He Is Very Plausible As Someone Who Could Sit In And Be President.

We Pretend To Be A Middle Class, Democratic Nation, But In Reality We Love Our Blue Bloods. ... We Love The Prep School Manners, The Aristocratic Calm, The Skull And Bones Mystery, The Dappled Lawns Stretching Before New England Summer Homes. How Else Can Be Explained The Bush Vs. Kerry Match-up That Confronts Us This Year?

I Agree With The Idea Of Cutting [budget], But It Should All Be Coming Out Of Entitlements For The Affluent And Not Out Of Domestic Discretionary, Which Is Welfare, Education, All The Stuff The Government Does, Parks, Fbi, And It Shouldn't Be Coming Out Of Medicaid.

We Are Primarily The Products Of Thinking That Happens Below The Level Of Awareness.

The Prevailing View Is That Geniuses Are Largely Built, Not Born.

It's Rare In An Administration For A Secretary Of State And A Secretary Of Defense To Get Along Really Well.

The Effectiveness Of A Group Of People Is Not Determined By Their Iq But By How Well They Communicate.

I Think Americans Expect Optimism In Their Leadership. The Most Popular And Effective Leaders, Whether It Was Bill Clinton Or Ronald Reagan Or Jack Kennedy, Brought To It A Sense Of Optimism And Possibility.

People Generally Don't Suffer High Rates Of Ptsd After Natural Disasters. Instead, People Suffer From Ptsd After Moral Atrocities. Soldiers Who've Endured The Depraved World Of Combat Experience Their Own Symptoms. Trauma Is An Expulsive Cataclysm Of The Soul.

Donald Trump's Got To Do Some Big Changes, Because What He Was Voted On. But When You Think About How To Do It, It Would Take Massive Expertise, Which His People, Believe Me, Do Not Have.

Almost Every Successful Person Begins With Two Beliefs: The Future Can Be Better Than The Present, And I Have The Power To Make It So.

Democrats In Environmental Agencies Tend To Be More Sensitive To Environmental Harm. And Republicans Tend To Be More Sensitive To Business Harm.

[donald Trump] Has Shifted - President [barack] Obama Has Shifted American Policy In A Much More Critical Way In Israel With The Settlements Than The Previous Presidents.

The Moral Foundation Of The Society, The Way We Interact With Each Other Is More Fundamental Than The Supreme Court.

People Tend To Marry People With Similar-width Noses, Eyes Similarly Apart, With Complementary Immune Systems.

Recovering From Suffering Is Not Like Recovering From A Disease. Many People Don’t Come Out Healed; They Come Out Different. They Crash Through The Logic Of Individual Utility And Behave Paradoxically. Instead Of Recoiling From The Sorts Of Loving Commitments That Almost Always Involve Suffering, They Throw Themselves More Deeply Into Them. Even While Experiencing The Worst And Most Lacerating Consequences, Some People Double Down On Vulnerability. They Hurl Themselves Deeper And Gratefully Into Their Art, Loved Ones And Commitments.

Sometimes, You Go - You Achieve A Few Things In Life. I Have Achieved More Career Success Than I Ever Experienced Or That I Ever Thought. And I Just Realized, It Doesn't Make You Happy. It's An Elemental Truth. It's So True.

When Your Institution Is Under Assault, You're Feeling Like The Weight Is On It And The History Might Be Flowing Away, Don't Turn Inward, Go Outward.

When You're In Governance, You Understand The Limitations And The Complexities Of Governance.

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