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" The American political system is based on the president taking the initiative and Congress responding. With President Trump, it's been the opposite. "

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" I cannot think of a president or administration that has taken seriously the 100 days. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The Reagan Revolution has had no second act. "

" For Andrew Jackson, politics was very personal. He hated not just the federal debt. He hated debt at all. "

" If it's a good story, it's a good story, and it draws readers in. "

" In the early 19th to the early 20th century, people had a lot of things wrong with them. Doctors didn't know how to fix them, and so they lived with them. "

" The stories that I tell, the topics that I choose to write about, usually are suggested by something that I've done before. "

" When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together? "

" Every work of history is a combination of argument and narrative. The longer I write, the more I emphasize the narrative, the story, and the less attention I give to the argument. Arguments come and go. "

" 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. "

" To me, the puzzle of Ronald Reagan is how a comparatively ordinary man, someone with not extraordinary talent, accomplished such extraordinary results. At the age of 50, no one expected that this was going to be the guy who would become, at least in my interpretation, one of the two most important presidents of the 20th century. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I was raised in, and presumably to, the cutlery business. I really didn't think that that's what I wanted to do for a career. But I felt a certain obligation to give it a try. "

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

" 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. "

" In modern times, the American military has become more bureaucratised. "

" Even when candidates have degrees from Harvard and Yale, they try to run as the candidate of the common man. "

" Reagan refused to demonize his foes. Instead he charmed them, with a few exceptions, including Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the embodiment of the liberalism Reagan sought to reverse. "

" Booker Washington was branded an accommodationist by many of the people who criticized him. "

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

" 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. "

" The historic dearth of labor was perhaps the central feature of the American economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "

" When a president was elected with foreign policy experience, it was usually less about his foreign policy experience than other things. "

" I never admit to wishing I'd written something by another author, but if my name mysteriously appeared on the title page of 'The Guns of August,' I wouldn't complain. "

" I've been writing big stories of history, but there are a lot of fascinating little stories. "

" 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.' "