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" From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States. "
Robert Dallek
Action
Office
Problem
Related Quotes:
" Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy. "
Robert Dallek
Past
Leadership
Strategy
" In counterfactual history, nothing is certain. "
Robert Dallek
Nothing
Certain
History
" 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
" There is a line between scurrilous nonsense and serious discussion that laps over, especially in this day and age when you've got all this electronic media and these blogs and this kind of fanatical impulse to bring down the opposing candidate. "
Robert Dallek
You
Serious
Media
" Vice President Biden's surprising declaration of unqualified support for gay marriage seems to have forced President Obama into a public endorsement of a controversial social issue. It is difficult not to suspect that Biden's pronouncement aimed to give the president some political cover. "
Robert Dallek
Marriage
Gay
Political
" 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
" Nowadays, everyone seems to have a blog that finds readers. "
Robert Dallek
Nowadays
Blog
Everyone
" Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history. "
Robert Dallek
Enough
History
American
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Long
American
Place
" Theodore Roosevelt had drawn public attention to his attractive family in order to create a bond with ordinary Americans. Eleanor Roosevelt had successfully broached the idea that a First Lady could be nearly as much a public figure as her husband. "
Robert Dallek
Husband
Family
Attention
" 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
" Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee in 1952, made a strong public commitment to ending the war in Korea, where fighting had reached a stalemate. "
Robert Dallek
Commitment
Where
War
" I think the public can t accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. They don t want to believe the world is that chaotic. It is. "
Robert Dallek
Believe
Think
World
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Disaster
Listening
Him
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Character
Change
Time
" Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy. "
Robert Dallek
Supportive
Policy
Foreign Policy
" Historians will look back and say, 'Foreign policy in the Ford presidency was very much dominated by Kissinger, with a kind of continuity from the Nixon period.' Ford is not going to be remembered as a really significant foreign policy maker. "
Robert Dallek
Back
Kind
Look
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
House
Absence
White
" John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems... spastic colitis. "
Robert Dallek
Different
Medical
Problems
" One doesn't simply write about Lyndon Johnson. You get the Johnson treatment from beyond the grave - arm around you, nose to nose. I should admit that he also reminds me of my father, quite an overbearing and narcissistic character. And in some ways, he reminds me of myself. Another workaholic. "
Robert Dallek
Myself
Me
Father
" There's a certain clubbiness to the idea that you're an ex-president. You're no longer a politician. You're a statesman. "
Robert Dallek
Politician
Statesman
You
" Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office. "
Robert Dallek
Political
Negative
You
" Presidential aspirants reach for the highest office to satisfy some yearning for greatness or even immortality. "
Robert Dallek
Greatness
Reach
Office
" Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate. "
Robert Dallek
Vietnam
Success
Remembered
" When Gingrich attacked CNN's John King for bringing up his alleged proposal of an open marriage to his second wife, Gingrich accused him of lowering the level of discourse in a presidential debate, suggesting that such a discussion is unworthy of consideration by voters. "
Robert Dallek
Marriage
Discourse
King
" 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
" 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
" Late 19th-century populists saw bankers and industrialists manipulating markets to enrich themselves at the expense of small farmers and labourers and favoured political candidates promising economic relief through free and unlimited coinage of silver. "
Robert Dallek
Small
Late
Political
" 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. "
Robert Dallek
Dreams
Great
History
" A national government using New Deal programs and the massive defense spending beginning with World War II and continuing through the Cold War was Johnson's vehicle for expanding the Southern economy and making it, as he hoped, one of the more prosperous regions of the country. "
Robert Dallek
Government
Beginning
War