David Pietrusza

“In front of an audience of Protestant clergy, the Catholic JFK "was drawing strength from his vulnerability.”

“Jack Kennedy protected a mature and presidential image – tough, yet not unduly combative.”

“The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha".”

“No matter what office LBJ assumed he lifted greater than when he found it.”

“There are really two essential things in campaigning. First, you must be in good humor. If you're going to be a raffle, you are to stay home. Second, you are to make sense in your speeches. These aren't the two things you must do. Unless you're saying, if you can be in good humor when you're exhausted. – Henry Cabot Lodge”

“Author points out in Woodrow Wilson the flipside of the positive we might call big picture vision. He observes that as college president Wilson resorted to the language of a national crusade when he met resistance in a local, academic issue.”

“Jousting with an obvious hoodlum couldn't hurt.”

“Nixon wanted view and advice brought to him through intermediaries. He wanted information filtered as it came to him – and he wanted his filters to filter his will back to those whom he must direct.”

“Nixon was by nature a excluder. Halderman like to exclude people. When Nixon's need met Halderman's abilities, you had the most perfect formula for disaster. – Jim Shepley”

“A lot of people here some South in your mouth, and they automatically think you're dumb. They think if you talk funny, you are funny. – Lloyd Hand”

“In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, "He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases.”

“Politics look very simple to the outsider whether he is a businessman or a soldier – it is only when you get into it that all the angles and hard work become apparent. James Forrestal”

“While JFK had made the sale on a political level, he had not yet completed it on an emotional one.”

“Be civilized. Grudges are for Neanderthals. – Hubert Humphrey”

“Richard Nixon coveted, to the point of obsession, a controversy-free, stage-managed coronation.”

“JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting.”

“The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt.”

“Henry Cabot Lodge was like medicine, good for you, but hard to take. – Teddy White”

“John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt on the changes in John F. Kennedy that led her to drop her opposition to his nomination for president: "He has the qualities of a scholar, and a sense of history. I had the feeling that he was the man who can learn. I like him better than I ever had before because he seemed so little caulk-sure, and I think he has a mind that is open to new ideas.”