David Brooks
Of course I don't know what's going on in that meeting on in the mind of Donald Trump. But I do know one of the things President Barack Obama was struck by was how much time he spent on cyber-security as president. And one of the things he said was that, in the years ahead, the next president will be spending even more time. And cyber-security isn't a thing that goes away after this election. It's a constant flow.Collection: Mind
One of the things capitalism does is, it does enhance and exacerbate the sin of pride, making yourself, the material world the center of your universe, instead of God's will.Collection: Pride
I'm not the most emotionally attuned guy in the world. My wife says that me writing about emotion is like Gandhi writing about gluttony.Collection: Writing
People who give money in large amount in politics are basically not altruistic. They have some issue. They have some interest. It may be world peace. It may be preserving carried interest. But it's not altruistic.Collection: Issues
People tend to marry people with similar-width noses, eyes similarly apart, with complementary immune systems.Collection: Eye
Politics really is a team sport. You really have to work the whole system to get somewhere down the road.Collection: Sports
We have the choice to choose how we're going to educate our emotions.Collection: Choices
Every time Kellyanne Conway goes on TV, there's another fight with whoever's interviewing her that particular day.Collection: Fighting
I generally think the president [Donald Trump] should get his Cabinet picks, unless they're egregiously out of the range, either ethically or intellectually out of the range of what's acceptable.Collection: Thinking
I think the Democrats are right to protest, but I don't think Jeff Sessions is so far out of the range of normalcy that he shouldn't be confirmed.Collection: Thinking
Would [Betsy DeVos] be my first pick? No. Is she someone who has dedicated her life to education policy? Yes, actually, she has.Collection: Firsts
Trump has picked the more extreme versions of all Republicans so far, the more aggressive. And I think the thing to watch out for is, I could totally paint a scenario where Trump runs an authoritarian regime. I can totally paint a scenario where he has no control over his own government.Collection: Running
Democrats in environmental agencies tend to be more sensitive to environmental harm. And Republicans tend to be more sensitive to business harm.Collection: Agency
I happen to think most people go into government do it for the right reasons and they really do things as they see them on the merits of the issues.Collection: Thinking
When a president speaks that usually means a lot.Collection: Mean
I have come to think we have to treat Donald Trump's tweets like Snapchat. It's just something that is going to go away. And it flies out of some region of his brain and it goes out into the ether. And usually it's on the realm of media.Collection: Thinking
The policies of the Democratic Party have always been in cultural consonance with the culture of the working class. And, somehow, they missed that.Collection: Party
When you're in governance, you understand the limitations and the complexities of governance.Collection: Complexity
You have to have a plan, or else you're just creating a recipe for chaos.Collection: Creating
I'm not sure [Donald] Trump has had that distinction between private and public life in his head. And so, I think there's likely to be an erosion of just that standard, that different standard, consciousness, and I think it's likely we'll see what we haven't seen in the last eight years and even the last 12 or 16 of private enrichment in office and scandals where people have to resign and things like that, because just once the standards go, behavior tends to go.Collection: Thinking
Donald Trump just needs the ego fed all the time.Collection: Ego
The Republicans in Congress, they believe in Ronald Reagan's Republican Party, not Donald Trump Republican Party or Steve Bannon's Republican Party.Collection: Party
Donald Trump is this whirling dervish of chaos. He picked a fight with Mexico. Germany is not far behind. He will pick a fight with them. He will pick a fight with China, which would be truly cataclysmic.Collection: Fighting
I do think Donald Trump is a fundamentally unstabilizing force and that the people who swore to uphold the Constitution are going to have to take some measures at some point.Collection: Thinking
I think as we interpret him and frankly as the world learns to interpret Donald Trump, are these just words that are enigmatic things floating on air or are they actually shifts in policy and will they change moment by moment, day by day without any underlying connection to the actual stuff of governance? I don't know.Collection: Thinking
I have seen [Betsy DeVos] present a few times. I don't really know her. But I have seen her present on education policy, and she's not a stupid person.Collection: Stupid
If I were Donald Trump, I would definitely not pick Mitt Romney because it's very easy for Mitt Romney to have have a separate foreign policy operatus in the State Department that would run a dissenting foreign policy from the White House foreign policy. There, I think the populist America-first foreign policy of Donald Trump does run against a potential rival.Collection: Running
I do think economic and social anxiety is the number one issue. And I'm pretty confident Hillary Clinton will be really riding that train pretty hard.Collection: Thinking
Fundamentalism is still on the march.Collection: March
I think that it's an arguable position, whether with Hamas and ISIS around, whether there should be a Palestinian state, but it's a defensible position, given the current circumstances.Collection: Thinking
Benjamin Netanyahu is a fascinating figure.We say Nixonian about a lot of people. He really is Nixonian. He's brilliant. He's very isolated and insular.Collection: People
Every White House I have covered since Reagan, when I got here, power has been more concentrated in the White House than the one before.Collection: White
If you're cutting deals with one company or another, eventually, there's going to be a quid pro quo. There's going to be a bribe. There's going to be something.Collection: Cutting
What's sort of remarkable is that, especially in the Israel and the Russia cases, you have got a U.S. citizen, Donald Trump, siding with a foreign leader against the U.S. president. There is a reason why president-elects have tried to remain mute during their transitional periods, relatively, because you just don't want to be for somebody - some other country against your own government, and especially when you're about to take the helm of that government.Collection: Country
I don't blame the Democrats for fighting. They have got a very energized base. And there is a lot to complain about a lot of these nominees. But I think, if you are actually going to turn someone down from a president's [Donald Trump] own Cabinet, it better be a lot more egregious than the cases we have seen.Collection: Fighting
There are plenty of team players in government who do whatever the leader says. There are too few difficult members, who have complicated minds, unusual perspectives, the toughness to withstand the party-line barrages and a practical interest in producing results.Collection: Team
The ugliness can sometimes be super ugly, but also a warning sign of something down below.Collection: Warning
If we are going to stop wars on this earth, we are going to have to make war on hunger our number one priority.Collection: War
On the [Betsy] DeVos case, I agree that the gun - her gun position is kind of weird, kind of crazy, but I do think she does know about public schools.Collection: Crazy
The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain.Collection: Government
Emotion is the foundation of reason.Collection: Foundation
We know the 65-point policy points, to the extent that they exist, but is Hillary Clinton willing to be vulnerable, is she willing to be funny, is she willing to be both authoritative, but also real? And so less what she says than the emotional tone she sets. It takes a lot of confidence to be a vulnerable speaker on this stage. And sometimes she hasn't always projected the confidence it takes to be in some ways weak. But that's what I think people were looking for, that moment of human connection.Collection: Real
The reason the Betsy DeVos case was the centerpiece case for the Democrats wasn't about her weakness as a knowledgeable person on education policy.Collection: Knowledgeable Person
Plunder is morally wrong. It ruins your credibility.Collection: Ruins
It's hard to imagine a party that is not corrupted by hatred.Collection: Party
What you hear in focus groups and conversations, people will give you 20 minutes of rage about how the borders are out of control. But then you start saying, practically, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about the 11 million here? What are we going to do to get some workers we need for the farms? Then people start having a normal conversation.Collection: People
People ask, quite legitimately, why [Betsy] DeVos and why not a lot of the others? But it's because it has to do with the special interest groups that run a lot of Washington.Collection: Running
People want a reality that tells them they're right all of the time.Collection: Reality
The rich don't exploit the poor, they just out-compete them.Collection: Competition