President Obama started in public life not as an elected official but as a community organizer. He worked with churches and other groups on the south side of Chicago to push public leaders to fight poverty, improve the local school system and make housing more affordable, and to bring about the change the community needed and deserved.
President Obama has made the Asia Pacific region a focus of his foreign policy, and Vietnam - a large, growing economy in the heart of Southeast Asia - is critical to those efforts.
In the course of a presidency, a U.S. president says millions of words in public. You never know which of them end up cementing a certain impression.
There are a very limited number of people in senior roles at the White House, and time is their most precious asset.
When I think of the things that Trump has done, ironically, everything is sort of - we care so much about Cuba and the Iran deal. I think pulling out of TPP is just devastating.
The TPP will be good for the American economy, the Vietnamese economy, and the labor and environmental standards that make life better for our people.
While the TPP - like any trade deal - is a subject of vigorous debate, its benefits are clear. The TPP will open markets and bring down barriers for American businesses in the world's largest emerging market, creating jobs at home.
Jose Marti, known as 'the Apostle of Cuban Independence,' was an influential poet, journalist, and political theorist who became a symbol for the Cuban people's bid for independence. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and self-determination feature prominently in his work.
If you are a speechwriter, you have to know what the person you're writing for thinks. A lot of foreign policy advisers are thinking, 'How can I get my proposal into this guy's speech?' I was just thinking, 'What does he want to say?'
The complete lack of governance in huge swaths of the Middle East - that is the project of the American establishment.
Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida, but for a long time, the distance between our two countries seemed a lot greater.
What I do miss is foreign travel, because there really is no substitute for showing up somewhere and representing the United States.
Following one of the most violent conflicts in human history, the United States and Japan built a deep and abiding friendship - an alliance that has underwritten unprecedented economic growth and security in the Asia Pacific for half a century. It is an alliance based on mutual interests and shared values and the ties between our people.
Baseball is a great example of the cultural ties between the United States and Cuba and a powerful reminder of the shared experience between people that transcends our difficult history.
One of the most depressing things about President Donald Trump's decision to roll back elements of the Cuba opening is how predictable it was.
People make a mistake when they think that if you just accumulate a set number of things on your resume, it's going to lead you to a particular place - the pattern of essentially compiling credentials to climb your way up a ladder. That may work, but that's not at all what happened to me.