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

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" 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. "

" A lot of people were ambivalent about Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 positioned himself as the peace candidate. Once Johnson sent large amounts of troops into battle in 1965, most Americans were behind the war. "

" The candidate who promises the most has the best chance of winning. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" The Republican Party has moved substantially to the right of where Reagan was. "

" 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. "

" Theodore Roosevelt, when he was out of office, he would do things to draw attention. But when you are president, you don't need to shout. When you are in office, you are the story. "

" Politics is not something most people have to do every day. Their daily lives are much more influenced by job opportunities, whether the country is in a recession or a boom period. If you really want to understand what drives American history, look at the economic... side. "

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

" In the early days of the republic, the secretary of state was the heir apparent to the president. Presidents could easily hand-pick their party's next candidate. The party caucuses formally selected the candidates, but presidents guided the process. "

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

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

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

" I certainly don't think that the heirs of the American Revolution were a particularly noble class. "

" 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.' "

" In some ways, I would be absolutely fascinated if Trump gets elected. "

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

" With my first few books, I was aiming at an academic audience, basically, to get tenure. You can presuppose a certain amount of knowledge; you can expect that there is this common background. "

" Some years ago, I read Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution, and I was very taken by the way he told the story, and it seemed as though I was right in the middle of things. And it took me a while to figure out how he achieved that effect, and one of the ways was to write it in the present tense. "

" When a president doesn't know the policy, it doesn't make for a very effective leader. "

" When the Constitution was written in 1787, there was this supposition that American politics would be above party. The people who would staff the positions in government would have the interests of the country, or at least their states and congressional districts, at heart, and so they wouldn't form permanent political parties. "

" 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. "