The biggest mistakes, early on, involved foreign policy and involved the strategy for health care.

Even on education, his one accomplishment, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and he has left it unfunded.

It was the biggest suppression of voting rights in our country's history since Jim Crow. And the thread of race runs from the beginning to the end of my book.

On health care, virtually every political error that could be made was made.

When you live in Washington, D.C., you do get a sense, in a very direct way, of the durability of our government and really, the greatness of the American system.

You know that I am living proof that the American Dream is real. Growing up, our congressman cut through government bureaucratic red tape to help my mom buy our first house. That's the kind of congressman I'll be.

If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system.

I think that you can disagree with people and debate over their positions with issues without engaging in the politics of personal destruction.