In Ancient Times And In Our Times,

After A Decade Of Profligacy, The American People Are Tired Of Politicians Who Talk The Talk But Don't Walk The Walk When It Comes To Fiscal Responsibility. It's Easy To Get Up In Front Of The Cameras And Rant Against Exploding Deficits. What's Hard Is Actually Getting Deficits Under Control. But That's What We Must Do. Like Families Across The Country, We Have To Take Responsibility For Every Dollar We Spend.

America Ranks 21st When It Comes To Math Education. We Rank 25th When It Comes To Science. We Used To Be Number One In The Proportion Of College Graduates. We Now Rank Ninth. And At An Age Where Knowledge, Skills, Are The Determinant Of How Successful We're Going To Be, Unless We Reverse That We're Going To Keep Slipping Behind Economically To A Lot Of Other Countries.

The Notion That We Would Condition Iran Not Getting Nuclear Weapons In A Verifiable Deal On Iran Recognizing Israel Is Really Akin To Saying That We Won't Sign A Deal Unless The Nature Of The Iranian Regime Completely Transforms. And That Is, I Think, A Fundamental Misjudgment.

We Shouldn't Assume That Government Is Always Trying To Do The Wrong Thing.

In The Wake Of 9/11, My Meetings With Arab And Pakistani Americans, For Example, Have A More Urgent Quality, For The Stories Of Detentions And Fbi Questioning And Hard Stares From Neighbors Have Shaken Their Sense Of Security And Belonging. They Have Been Reminded That The History Of Immigration In This Country Has A Dark Underbelly; They Need Specific Reassurances That Their Citizenship Really Means Something, That America Has Learned The Right Lessons From The Japanese Internments During World War Ii, And That I Will Stand With Them Should The Political Winds Shift In An Ugly Direction.