If Mitt Romney is vanilla, Chris Christie is three hefty scoops of Rocky Road topped with whipped cream, Red Bull, and gravel.

With gridlock the norm, Congress's approval rating is below 10 percent and the public has lost faith in its national leadership.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt faced adversities that, in their times, seemed impregnable. Great presidents overcome great odds.

It's an appeal as old as America and its presidency: This is an extraordinary country populated by hard-working, big-dreaming, freedom-loving people graced by God when they're not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

Got good news and bad news for you, Mr. President. The good news is that Chief Justice John Roberts just saved your legacy and, perhaps, your presidency by writing for the Supreme Court majority to rule health care reform constitutional.

A presidential debate is a job interview. And voters look for certain traits in people applying to be president.

American exceptionalism is the recurring character in the nation's narrative.

Sitting in the Oval Office, beneath a painting of George Washington, with a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. over his right shoulder and a bust of Abraham Lincoln over his left shoulder, Obama told 'National Journal' that the country's economic woes are deep and endemic.

Christie led the way - with a bulldozer. The governor is blunt, brash, and self-consciously authentic, the antithesis to what turns off today's voters: flip-flopping politicians who speak in poll-tested platitudes. Yes, he's the anti-Romney.

Somebody must be up and somebody must be down. Trouble is, campaigns are messy, subtle creatures that don't follow convenient narratives.

Climate change was a point of division between Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney. The president declared climate change a global threat, acknowledged that the actions of humanity were deepening the crisis, and pledged to do something about it if elected.

Obama considers himself above deal-making and back-slapping, political necessities he often delegates to Vice President Joe Biden and other lesser sorts.

Part of the problem is voters know relatively little about Romney. And some of what they know about him complicates his task: Romney has a history of flip-flopping on issues, he's extraordinarily wealthy, and he can be tone-deaf about what moves voters. He just doesn't seem comfortable in his skin.

By nominating Chuck Hagel to be his Defense secretary, President Obama is putting forward an aloof contrarian who doesn't suffer fools - a striving politician who considers himself above politics.

Although we were never pals and occasionally butted heads, my relationship with Clinton and his wife, Hillary, made me a better journalist.

Since declaring that she would not serve in a second Obama administration, Clinton has dismissed suggestions that she will run in 2016.

Andrew Jackson was the first president to claim that the desires of the public overrode Congress's constitutional prerogatives. Virtually every president since Jackson has claimed the mantle, even while lacking two ingredients of an electoral mandate: a landslide victory and a specific agenda.

Romney and Democratic rival President Obama have led their partisan backers down a trail of lies, negativity and vacuous policies that seem certain to guarantee an angry electorate four more years of gridlock.

Blending hard-bitten realism with long-view optimism, Obama said that every 20 or 30 years brings a new cycle of pessimism in America.

It seems to me that any reason for people getting more active in running or taking part in politics and government I think is just terrific.

There's so much compromise in politics. I'm not a good compromiser.

When Target gets hacked, I don't hear people saying, 'Hey, was it Kohl's? Was it Wal-Mart?' It doesn't matter. There was a hack; you deal with it.

I believe there's only one regulation in life that works: failure.

The jobs outlook in the U.S. isn't very good. And it's really about young people.