Growing up in politics I know that women decide all elections because we do all the work.

Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

After my mom died, there was so much written about her fashion and her style and all that, and I felt that one of the most important parts of her was missing, her real intellectual curiosity.

Sharing the holiday with other people, and feeling that you're giving of yourself, gets you past all the commercialism.

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012.

To Westerners, the students at Tiananmen may have given an impression of a solid and energetic consensus against dictatorship and for democracy, but they were an egotistical and fractious lot, riven by disagreements over tactics and money.

The Kremlin hacked our presidential election, is waging a cyberwar against our NATO allies, and is probing opportunities to use similar tactics against democracies worldwide. Why, then, are federal agencies, local and state governments, and millions of Americans unwittingly inviting this threat into their cyber networks and secure spaces?

Under the leadership of this President, the state of the union is not strong. We are being pulled apart rather than pulling together. Our democracy is suffering from the choices being made, and yet we are offered the same tired excuses and unrealistic analyses.