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" Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see. "

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" Truman is now seen as a near-great president because he put in place the containment doctrine boosted by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and NATO, which historians now see as having been at the center of American success in the cold war. "

Robert Dallek

Place

War

Success

" The disaster at the Bay of Pigs intensified Kennedy's doubts about listening to advisers from the CIA, the Pentagon, or the State Department who had misled him or allowed him to accept lousy advice. "

" To be sure, Kennedy did not discount the importance of words in rallying the nation to meet its foreign and domestic challenges. Winston Churchill's powerful exhortations during World War II set a standard he had long admired. Kennedy was hardly unmindful of how important a great inaugural address could be. "

" The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate. "

" Congress becomes the public voice of opposition. "

" Public scandals are America's favorite parlor sport. Learning about the flaws and misdeeds of the rich and famous seems to satisfy our egalitarian yearnings. "

" A president cannot sit on his hands and be seen as passive in the face of ruthless action by a foreign dictator. "

" Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else. "

" 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. "

" For style and for creating a mood of optimism and hope - Kennedy on that count is as effective as any president the country has had in its history. "

" With television, you can make anyone look larger than life. "

" When President Obama first unveiled his gun control proposals recommending a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and better background checks, there seemed to be momentum behind the effort. But then the proposals ran into a wall. "

" Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure. "

Robert Dallek

Failure

Troubles

" My feeling is that it's a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War. "

" Few American presidents are held in higher esteem than Thomas Jefferson. Though historians have scrutinized every phase of his long public career and found him wanting in a number of respects, he holds an unshakable place in the pantheon of American heroes. "

" Full federal funding for presidential libraries should bring with it new rules of control over papers and artifacts. "

" In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear. "

" Some Kennedy aides have always insisted that Johnson misread J.F.K.'s plans for Vietnam. They say that Kennedy had begun to rethink the U.S. presence in Indochina and was reluctant to increase it. "

" During Grover Cleveland's second term, in the 1890s, the White House deceived the public by dismissing allegations that surgeons had removed a cancerous growth from the President's mouth; a vulcanized-rubber prosthesis disguised the absence of much of Cleveland's upper left jaw and part of his palate. "

" George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war. "

" True, most Americans give lip service to the proposition that even the most exalted among us have their flaws, but we are eager to believe that presidents manage to rise above the limitations that beset the rest of us. "

" To be sure, hunters and sportsmen back gun rights. Beyond that, there are millions who see guns as a defense against fear - fear of criminals breaking into their homes or assaulting them on city streets. "

" Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history. "

" Harry Truman wrote scathing letters, but he almost never sent them. "

" It's always valuable for someone running for president... to have as much bipartisan support as possible. "

" Access to presidential materials should be as wide as possible. "

" Nixon's deep antipathy toward Jews is well known, and he took a strange satisfaction in having Kissinger in his inner circle, where he could periodically taunt him. "

" If nobody trusts you as president, then you can't get anything done. "

" Experience helped Richard Nixon, but it didn't save him, and it certainly wasn't a blanket endorsement. He blundered terribly in dealing with Vietnam. "

" I think experience is a terribly overrated idea when it comes to thinking about who should become president. "