Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Previous candidates who get elected are almost always sobered by the office and the responsibility they take on. Donald Trump shows no evidence of that. He's the same Trump that he was when he was host of his reality TV show. He's the same Trump that he was when he was a candidate. "

H. W. Brands

Reality

Evidence

Show

Related Quotes:

" Booker Washington was essentially the head Republican boss in the South. He was a power broker. "

H. W. Brands

Republican

Power

" Americans knock themselves out, especially since 9/11, praising the military. "

" Reagan is the subject of ongoing political debate, and a lot of liberals don't want to take Reagan any more seriously than they did when he was president. I understand why they don't, but they should. "

" 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. "

" The Founders were anything but demigods to themselves and their contemporaries, who recognized full well that the experiment in self-government had only begun. "

" 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.' "

" I'm often asked, 'Why didn't Benjamin Franklin ever become president?' My short, easy answer is: He died. "

" President Obama ran a campaign in 2008 that was entirely expected from a non-incumbent. You promise, and you imply that if you elect me, everything good is going to happen. "

H. W. Brands

Happen

Everything

" I'm more inclined to say the presidency has changed Trump rather than Trump changed the presidency. He has moderated or reversed himself on most of the positions he took as a candidate. Reality has set in, as it does with every new president. "

H. W. Brands

New

President

" When you're actually president, the spin matters a lot less. "

" 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. "

" In the academic world, biographies of these great figures of the past fell out of favor in the 1960s, when there was a turn toward social history, which meant the history of the voiceless and faceless. But the public at large never embraced the idea that these dead white guys should be abandoned. "

" It's not an exaggeration to say that Texas gets a lot more out of being part of the United States than the United States gets out of having Texas as one of the states. "

" The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress. "

" With my students, I always have to sell my subject because I know when you're 19, 20 years old, you've got other things on your mind besides American history. What I have to do is make this as compelling as possible. "

" You might say presidents are drafting the first chapter of their memoirs in these seventh-year State of the Union addresses. They're trying to get the public and the media to think about their presidencies in the way that they would like to have them thought of. "

" By the early 1960s, there was a moral consensus on what needed to be done on civil rights. "

" I had this grand plan for writing the history of the United States in six volumes. This was in the mid-1990s; I was fairly young and very ambitious. I pitched it to a publisher, who just laughed at me. "

H. W. Brands

History

Just

" Although this should not be so, historians reconsider presidencies based on how the presidents conduct themselves after leaving office. "

" If the incumbent or his party has been discredited sufficiently, the challenger can run a successful, content-free campaign. "

" Members of Congress are somewhat reluctant to tangle with a president who seems to have the backing of the American people. "

" I've probably written some books - I know I've written some books that were more interesting to me than to a large audience, but that was mostly when I was first getting started in academia and writing for a narrow audience. "

" He used humor more effectively than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Reagan was not an especially warm person, but he appeared to be. Many people disliked his policies, but almost no one disliked him. "

" There is a certain kind of sobering, civilizing effect that being president imposes on people. There is a certain kind of dignity with which you comport yourself. As an observer of the presidency, I have to wonder if Trump would follow that pattern. "

" Everything that happens today is like something in the past, but it's also unlike things in the past. We never know until an event happens if it's the similarities or differences that matter more. "

" Interest in the Founders has risen and fallen over time, as has admiration for them and their accomplishments. "

" The race question in America has often been about race, but it has equally often been about power. "

" Our love for the Founders leads us to abandon, and even to betray, the very principles they fought for. "

H. W. Brands

Abandon

Our Love

" I'm the farthest thing from a bibliophile. I purge my collection regularly: If I haven't read a book in a couple of years, I try to give it to someone who will. "

" On style points alone, Donald Trump makes GWB look magnificently presidential. "