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" Americans knock themselves out, especially since 9/11, praising the military. "
H. W. Brands
Since
Military
Knock
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" The stories that I tell, the topics that I choose to write about, usually are suggested by something that I've done before. "
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" Interest in the Founders has risen and fallen over time, as has admiration for them and their accomplishments. "
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" A president can start a war under relatively specious circumstances, and once American soldiers are under fire, Americans will support the soldiers and support the president. "
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" Although this should not be so, historians reconsider presidencies based on how the presidents conduct themselves after leaving office. "
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" For Andrew Jackson, politics was very personal. He hated not just the federal debt. He hated debt at all. "
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" Love makes the most careful man wreckless. "
H. W. Brands
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" I'm trying to tell the story of the evolution of America. Each biography is a life in time, and I can see there's a particular task for each generation that I write about. "
H. W. Brands
Generation
Life
America
" Booker Washington was branded an accommodationist by many of the people who criticized him. "
H. W. Brands
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Washington
People
" Presidents have to decide what their popularity is for. Lyndon Johnson probably understood best that political popularity is a wasting asset. You had to use it when you had it. "
H. W. Brands
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" President Trump is doing what he can to act decisively. And if there's one thing most people have in mind in distinguishing the business world from the political world is that the CEO of a business can act decisively. "
H. W. Brands
World
Political
People
" When you look at the development of the American presidency, you see that the presidents who have had the greatest impact are the ones who fit their times most successfully. "
H. W. Brands
Impact
Look
American
" The Republican Party has moved substantially to the right of where Reagan was. "
H. W. Brands
Party
Right
Reagan
" Theodore Roosevelt, when he was out of office, he would do things to draw attention. But when you are president, you don't need to shout. When you are in office, you are the story. "
H. W. Brands
Need
Office
Story
" I read in all forms: paper, computer, phone, audio. "
H. W. Brands
Paper
Phone
Read
" The Founders were anything but demigods to themselves and their contemporaries, who recognized full well that the experiment in self-government had only begun. "
H. W. Brands
Anything
Well
Who
" When a president was elected with foreign policy experience, it was usually less about his foreign policy experience than other things. "
H. W. Brands
Experience
Foreign Policy
Less
" The candidate who promises the most has the best chance of winning. "
H. W. Brands
Best
Winning
Promises
" When people think of the oil industry, they think of Rockefeller, much like when people think of the software industry, they think of Bill Gates. "
H. W. Brands
Software
People
Think
" People are interested in people. They buy biographies; they don't buy studies of presidencies. "
H. W. Brands
Interested
People
Buy
" Once you become president, you don't even have to stop for red lights. And if it looks like traffic's too bad, you just take a helicopter. "
H. W. Brands
Bad
You
Traffic
" Reagan has been deified by the Republican Party, which is odd. The Reagan that modern Republicans revere is not the real Reagan. "
H. W. Brands
Modern
Party
Odd
" Every year, I have my graduate students read the great works of history, from classical times to the present. They gamely tackle Tacitus, ponder Plutarch, plow through Gibbon. Then they get to Thomas Carlyle and feel like Dorothy when she touched down in Technicolor Oz. "
H. W. Brands
Down
Present
History
" If the incumbent or his party has been discredited sufficiently, the challenger can run a successful, content-free campaign. "
H. W. Brands
Run
Been
Campaign
" Toward the end of the 1964 presidential campaign, Reagan gives a speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater. It was like a screen test for a new career. "
H. W. Brands
End
Career
Test
" Members of Congress are somewhat reluctant to tangle with a president who seems to have the backing of the American people. "
H. W. Brands
Congress
American
President
" The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They're probably not likely to get it done. "
H. W. Brands
Minutes
Stuff
Union
" Reagan gave essentially the same speech from the beginning to the end of his political career, which was always, 'The American people are great, the government always screws things up, let's get the government out of the way.' On the foreign policy side it was, 'Communism is bad, and we're going to defeat it.' "
H. W. Brands
Beginning
People
Great
" The Tea Party loves Reagan because he said exactly what they want to hear. "
H. W. Brands
Party
Want
Because
" The president of the United States from the 1940s until 2017 was considered the leader of the free world - probably the most powerful person in the world - not simply in terms of America's military might but in terms of the moral authority of the president. Donald Trump has largely abdicated that. "
H. W. Brands
Powerful
World
Leader
" Some years ago, I read Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution, and I was very taken by the way he told the story, and it seemed as though I was right in the middle of things. And it took me a while to figure out how he achieved that effect, and one of the ways was to write it in the present tense. "
H. W. Brands
Revolution
History
Story