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My father said, 'Son, when you grow up, I don't want you to be a member of a party that caters to the oppressed and the poor. You have to aspire to be a member of a party that is happy, winning and influential.'

Sitting around our kitchen table from a very early age on, we talked politics, and we talked policy. Never once can I ever remember my dad saying, 'Go away, this is an adult conversation.'

I told my father I had to try political science for a year. He thought I was throwing my life away.

I was studying political science; I was adamant that I was going to follow in my father's footsteps.

I remember my father, when I said I was going down to Little Rock to work for Governor Clinton's run for president, he thought maybe somebody needed to check the medication cabinet. He thought somebody was playing around with it. He had never heard of him, he said. I said, 'Well, I think he's going to be the next President of the United States.'

You always bump into politics in life, and as a man, I'm party to a number of environmental issues that concern me first and foremost, as a man, as a father.

My father was not a political animal.

My father had lifelong contempt for politicians.

As I've gotten older, I've gotten more liberal, and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents, I practically fell out of my chair.

This political climate today reminds me of what my father must have gone through in 1942, when the winds of war and fires of hate were surrounding him. We have a candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, using the same rhetoric that my father must have heard from elected officials.