Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.

The Chinese Communist Party and the American people are locked in conflict.

Before becoming a college president, I helped over a dozen organizations find strategies to get through some very ugly crises.

Obamacare has eliminated choices for millions of families, suffocated patient-centered medical innovation, and moved the United States closer to European-style centralized planning.

The government has convinced parents that at some point it's no longer their responsibility. And in fact, they force them, in many respects, to turn their children over to the public education system and wrest control from them and block them out of participation of that. That has to change or education will not improve in this country.

Considering community support and cost-benefit analysis, I have supported earmarks for projects of high public purpose involving such areas as higher education, alternative energy, transportation, medical research and military infrastructure.

What America is thirsting for now is a battalion of strong, down-to-earth 'doers' - managers, frontline activists, business and social entrepreneurs engaged in tackling America's manifold problems of unemployment, education, and competitive slouch.

Every child should have a caring adult in their lives. And that's not always a biological parent or family member. It may be a friend or neighbor. Often times it is a teacher.