I was always a writer - working on campaigns was never a profession for me. It was something I did on the side, really, so the trajectory hasn't been a political operative who likes to dabble in writing and finds himself into stumbling on film and TV - that was always my goal.

My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole - I was an advance man.

Tales of power and ambition and intrigue and betrayal and desire - when you're telling those in a big way, you automatically want to go to Shakespeare.

It's a rough and tumble game whenever power is involved - people's ambitions, their desires, their competitive spirit will often push them to play outside the rules. It's dramatic, it's interesting, and I think it's something we can all identify with to a degree.

I don't want to harm my government. I want to help my government. But the fact that they are willing to completely ignore due process, they're willing to declare guilt without ever seeing a trial, these are things that we need to work against as a society and say, 'Hey, this is not appropriate.'

Winning and losing have their significance in a democracy. But there should be no arrogance in victory, nor should there be any despondency in defeat.

Even though I'm not Jamaican, I've always loved Jamaican culture because, to me, it's the island of magic, it's the island of politics, of resistance.

Clinton passed his first budget without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Before it led to the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, it led to a Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms.