If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

Restoring and maintaining a great nation's fiscal health will require not just sound arguments and an engaged public but something more. It will require an electoral system that encourages our representatives to place the long-term interests of the public ahead of parochial special interests.

The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30, 40, or 50. Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

I served three terms in the U.S. Senate and was co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010. So I know a bit about how Washington operates, and I have had plenty of experience doing the work of running for office.

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.

The word liberal distinguishes whatever nourishes the mind and spirit from the training which is merely practical or professional or from the trivialities which are no training at all.