Growing up in Israel, how can I not be an optimist? When you remember what Israel was 50 years ago and you see Israel now, one of the most successful countries in the world, stable, democratic, with an enormously stable economy despite everything that has happened in the global economy in the last few years, how can I not be an optimist?

There is nowhere I encounter greater understanding for Israel's existential issues than in the Oval Office.

The military operation in Lebanon was the most successful military operation in recent Israeli history. Many in Israel don't recognise that.

From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008 I think I met with Abu Mazen more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations.

Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

Even people who aren't engaged on the actual battlefield - the effects of war reach out like tentacles into families, into economies, into the changing geography, into politics. It shakes up everything.

When you get together in a group, it becomes like a family, with the different personalities and the politics that comes with being in a band. It's different than bringing something in by yourself.

Now that our media companies and it appears are policies are traded for cash, what is there to check the continuing consolidation of power and diminishing of democracy?