In 2006 it was a horrible election year, and, you know, I lost. But I lost because I continued to be a constant conservative, and the last six years I was someone who was a national figure in the sense that I was the third ranking Republican in leadership and I had just run President Bush's campaign in Pennsylvania.

But look what happens when the government gives you rights. When the government gives you rights, unlike when God gives you rights, the government can take them away. When government gives you rights, the government can tell you how to exercise those rights.

Look at the political base of the Democratic Party: It is single mothers who run a household. Why? Because it's so tough economically that they look to the government for help and therefore they're going to vote.

The president of the United States is a commander-in-chief, and the president of the United States, you know, executes the laws and tries to motivate the American public to make changes that are necessary. It's not necessarily a CEO type of position.

As a chef, I had started working with groups like Share Our Strength and various local food banks in New York, raising money for hunger-related issues. And not only me, but the entire restaurant industry has been very focused on this issue.

When you contribute to food banks or give money that goes to having meals delivered, you're meeting the most basic need. It's such a direct way to help.

How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?

The very beginning of European aesthetics started from Florence. Everything here was beauty, money, and creativity, the power of the good money.