Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Every year since 1990, the Gallup poll has asked Americans to assess all the presidents since John F. Kennedy. And every year, Kennedy comes out on top. "
Robert Dallek
Out
Assess
Poll
Related Quotes:
" Access to presidential materials should be as wide as possible. "
Robert Dallek
Possible
Should
Wide
" In counterfactual history, nothing is certain. "
Robert Dallek
Nothing
Certain
History
" President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress. "
Robert Dallek
Through
Reality
Talk
" The CIA's official history of the Bay of Pigs operation is filled with dramatic and harrowing details that not only lay bare the strategic, logistical, and political problems that doomed the invasion, but also how the still-green President John F. Kennedy scrambled to keep the U.S. from entering into a full conflict with Cuba. "
Robert Dallek
History
Conflict
Political
" There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great. "
Robert Dallek
Achieve
Limits
Expectations
" McCarthy had ten years in the House of Representatives, only two terms as a senator. What did he pass? Are there any bills or any piece of legislation that he's identified with? Not at all. "
Robert Dallek
He
Years
Legislation
" Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country. "
Robert Dallek
Rest
Racial
Only
" At the end of the day, Americans are not so keen on ideologues, people who have such fixed positions that they can't see any virtue in the other side's point of view. "
Robert Dallek
View
Day
End
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Kind
Peace
Vision
" F.D.R. had an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions in 1933 when he drove 15 major bills through the Congress, and super majorities in the House and the Senate in 1935 when he won passage of Social Security. "
Robert Dallek
Crisis
Security
Bills
" Presidential aspirants reach for the highest office to satisfy some yearning for greatness or even immortality. "
Robert Dallek
Greatness
Reach
Office
" Presidents need to be critically studied and analyzed. "
Robert Dallek
Need
Studied
Critically
" Congress becomes the public voice of opposition. "
Robert Dallek
Opposition
Congress
Public
" In seeking an empire of liberty, Jefferson wished not only to expand the country's territorial holdings, but also to extend American institutions around the globe. "
Robert Dallek
American
Empire
Liberty
" Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union. "
Robert Dallek
One Thing
Campaigning
Union
" I think experience is a terribly overrated idea when it comes to thinking about who should become president. "
Robert Dallek
Who
Experience
Thinking
" What makes war interesting for Americans is that we don't fight war on our soil, we don't have direct experience of it, so there's an openness about the meanings we give to it. "
Robert Dallek
War
Our
Experience
" American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions. "
Robert Dallek
Theatre
American
National
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
People
Office
Kind
" Lyndon Johnson is not a comfortable model for President Obama to imitate. He is an all-but-forgotten president - pilloried for the failed war in Vietnam and criticized for grandiose reforms conservatives denounce as the epitome of federal social engineering that costs too much and does too little. "
Robert Dallek
Engineering
Too Much
War
" Presidents are not only the country's principal policy chief, shaping the nation's domestic and foreign agendas, but also the most visible example of our values. "
Robert Dallek
Values
Nation
Principal
" Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure. "
Robert Dallek
Like
Failure
Troubles
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Purpose
Desire
Great
" My feeling is that it's a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War. "
Robert Dallek
History
War
Won
" Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time. "
Robert Dallek
Time
Failure
Disaster
" Clinton's egregious act of self-indulgence was outdone by an impeachment based not on constitutionally required high crimes and misdemeanors but on a vindictive determination to bring down a president who had offended self-righteous moralists eager to put a different political agenda in place. "
Robert Dallek
Down
Political
Place
" Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order. "
Robert Dallek
Order
First
Him
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Strange
Satisfaction
Him
" George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war. "
Robert Dallek
Nation
Path
Through
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Great
War
Powerful