The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence we have created the perpetual presidential campaign.

My first meeting as a senator my first day they were already talking about the next election. Part of that's the permanent campaign part of that's a word I've been using more frequently 'tribal.' Our politics has become tribal: It's us versus them.

Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.

London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble we had severe energy problems we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.

I'll never get out of politics. I have friends in public office. I have things that I want to do. You can't go back in life. I won't go back to the existence I had before of running a political consulting firm and signing up clients and advising campaigns in exactly that way.

We tend to think of politics as bad full of dirty tricks negative ads big campaigns but I am here to explore the original meaning of politics which is positive and has to do with balancing competing interests and looking for solutions.

When I first started working in politics as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.

If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles come and join this campaign.

I'm not an old experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

We are telling veterans they must sacrifice to pay for the pet projects and contracts to campaign donors of powerful members of Congress.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

When you were a volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign you came in the morning you had a supervisor who gave you a list of calls to make and a time to do it in.

For us political activists and candidates the morning after any election is a mix of emotions - the personal and the immediate the culmination of your own recent campaigning efforts and the fortunes of your party and the success or otherwise of what you stand for and believe in.

Well I think money has been going into political campaigns for a very long time.

I know that campaigns can seem small and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you're sick of hearing me approve this message believe me - so am I.

My first big job was an Abercrombie &Fitch campaign. But my mom wouldn't let me skip school for it so I missed half of the shoot. When we got there we realized Bruce Weber was the photographer we knew we had made a mistake!

As a mom I understand how important it is to ensure kids start their day right and always make sure my kids have a nutritious breakfast. One in five U.S. children live in homes where food is not always available which is why I partnered with Kellogg's on their 'Share Your Breakfast' campaign which provide breakfasts to kids in need.

Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples - where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping The Sports Authority which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised.

It's not as if our party has a leadership campaign underway.

I am leaving because I have to fight simultaneously a potential recurrence of cancer the Democratic leadership a health care bill that's going to destroy this country my opposition to it and a belief that my party has become what it became - what it campaigned against.

It is sad that the Republican leadership is not as interested as they say they are in protecting the institution of marriage as they are in waging a campaign to divide and distract the American people from the real issues that need to be addressed.

Year after year President Bush has broken his campaign promises on college aid. And year after year the Republican leadership in Congress has let him do it.

I have run a general election campaign pregnant and ran Ed Miliband's leadership campaign commuting to London with a new baby so I already have my system set up.