Robert Dallek quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Robert Dallek

Robert Dallek Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Robert Dallek on Wise Famous Quotes.

Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy.

There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great.

Congress becomes the public voice of opposition.

I see a direct line between Kennedy and Richard Nixon and the opening to China and the detente with the Soviet Union.

Despite its flaws, the American electoral system has produced Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Harry Truman.

The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate.

JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.

Harry Truman wrote scathing letters, but he almost never sent them.

If Roosevelt didn't have World War II, he never would have had a third term.

In the late 19th century, the Populists - a protest movement of mainly disaffected farmers and workers - threatened to overturn established authority.

Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

Experience helped Richard Nixon, but it didn't save him, and it certainly wasn't a blanket endorsement. He blundered terribly in dealing with Vietnam.

Nowadays, everyone seems to have a blog that finds readers.

How many State of the Union addresses do people remember? They don't resonate that way.

For style and for creating a mood of optimism and hope - Kennedy on that count is as effective as any president the country has had in its history.

Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee in 1952, made a strong public commitment to ending the war in Korea, where fighting had reached a stalemate.

The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.

There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.

Access to presidential materials should be as wide as possible.

The Bay of Pigs is one of America's most infamous Cold War blunders, and it has been studied, debated, and dramatized endlessly ever since.

It's always valuable for someone running for president ... to have as much bipartisan support as possible.

The greatest presidents have been those who demonstrated astute judgment in times of crisis - often despite the advice they were getting.

Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.

Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society launched an anti-Communist crusade that won the support of millions of Americans in the 1950s.

At the start of first terms, presidents invariably have a measure of goodwill.

The Cold War is over. The kind of authority that the presidents asserted during the Cold War has now been diminished.

Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union.

My feeling is that it's a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War.

What did in the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union.

If nobody trusts you as president, then you can't get anything done.

It is very difficult for [people] to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy.

Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history.

Flattery was one of Kissinger's principal tools in winning over Nixon, and a tool he employed shamelessly.

After one party loses two elections in a row, there's sort of blood in the water.

Full federal funding for presidential libraries should bring with it new rules of control over papers and artifacts.

Presidents need to be critically studied and analyzed.

Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country.

With television, you can make anyone look larger than life.

George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war.

Presidents by six years have been there long enough for the media and the country to see their flaws.

Unity is Obama's theme.

Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else.

Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public - not while he was alive, at any rate.

A president cannot sit on his hands and be seen as passive in the face of ruthless action by a foreign dictator.

What's in a person's heart and soul will not likely be changed by the ability to command a helicopter to land on the South Lawn.

How different our national perspective would be had Johnson, rather than Nixon, served from 1969 to 1973.

John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems ... spastic colitis.

Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson's legislative success on civil rights.

By the time a second term rolls around, the illusions about a president have largely evaporated.

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.

I think experience is a terribly overrated idea when it comes to thinking about who should become president.

There's a certain clubbiness to the idea that you're an ex-president. You're no longer a politician. You're a statesman.

Concealing one's true medical condition from the voting public is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency.

They are pretty good at improvising, but God help us if they are given time to think. Dean Atchison

Presidential aspirants reach for the highest office to satisfy some yearning for greatness or even immortality.

American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.