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When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks.

Bill Phillips was this nervous, chain-smoking student. He had signed up to be an engineer, he had gone away to fight in the Second World War, he had come back. He had switched to sociology because he wanted to understand how people could do these terrible things to each other. And he did a little bit of economics on the side.

When Kennedy could not get the civil rights bill passed - and he was the big liberal - Lyndon Johnson came in and it got passed, and he was the conservative and the southerner. So sometimes in politics, to get something done, it takes a special kind of knowledge and a special kind of person, but it doesn't always follow the party lines.

Kennedy was the driving force of reform in America.

The Spending Control Act. It would recreate President Reagan's grace commission to have a bipartisan commission on how we reduce spending.

The Constitution was about a limitation on power.

Franklin Roosevelt had to govern at a time of crisis. If you're going to make changes in the way a nation thinks, you have to have the ability to take the crisis of the moment and use it to shape an agenda.

George W. Bush brought a lot of minorities into his administration, which was a positive thing, and they had some issues that they wanted to press, but 9/11 really gave them direction. It gave them a purpose.

Presidents and speakers for over 100 years had tried to pass affordable care for all Americans. It was challenged over and over. The Supreme Court declared it constitutional.

It was the best route to get folks to understand segregation fast. Civil rights and women's rights had a clear history. Making the transition to rights for people with disabilities became easier because we had the history of the other two.