Robert Dallek Quotes & Sayings (Page 10)

“Despite an unqualified understanding that U.S. national security was inextricably bound up with Britain's survival, F.D.R. knew that his reelection in part rested on the hope that he would keep the country out of war.”

“During his presidency, Truman and the Republicans were locked in a series of furious assaults on each other that outraged him and made Truman an enduring foe of a party and its representatives, which he saw as on the wrong side of almost every domestic and foreign policy issue he considered important.”

“Herbert Hoover was a man of genuine, fine character, but he lacked practical political sense. And he couldn't bend and shift and change with the requirements of the time. And he was a ruined President, because he was such a, I think, stiff-backed ideologue. And I think that speaks volumes about his character.”

“Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?”

“A presidential candidate's great desire is to be seen as pragmatic, and they hope their maneuvering and shifting will be seen in pursuit of some higher purpose. It doesn't mean they are utterly insincere.”

“At the end of their first years, there are few people who would have predicted that Truman would be elected in 1948 or that Reagan would get a second term. It's always premature to make some kind of categorical judgment after the first year in office.”

“Besieged by lawsuits that threatened to engulf almost everyone at the White House, Clinton assistants shunned paper or e-mail records of their daily deliberations. One told me that he would go down the hall to confer with his division chief face to face rather than discuss an issue on the telephone.”

“Compared with other recent presidents whose stumbles and failures have assaulted the national self-esteem, memories of Kennedy continue to give the country faith that its better days are ahead. That's been reason enough to discount his limitations and remain enamored of his presidential performance.”

“During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson.”

“Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee in 1952, made a strong public commitment to ending the war in Korea, where fighting had reached a stalemate.”