Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.

Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar.

It's very personal in its politics very bitter and very negative.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances conjectures and conjunctions.

Please don't ask me any questions about the politics of 30 years ago.

Clinton and Obama practice this politics known quaintly as the Richard Speck strategy: if you cannot take on everyone in the room at once take them out of the room one at a time.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics: I'd already been booed cheered cut sold traded and hung in effigy.

My passion for ideas is not matched with a passion for partisan or electoral politics.

Would that the simple maxim that honesty is the best policy might be laid to heart that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.