A biography for Robert Dallekhasn’t been written yet.
“Presidential aspirants reach for the highest office to satisfy some yearning for greatness or even immortality.”
“Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union.”
“JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.”
“The so-called second New Deal of 1935 - including the Works Progress Administration, Social Security and the Wagner Act legalizing union labor - represented an effort to meet the rising voices demanding a more aggressive government approach to the collapse of national prosperity.”
“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.”
“Presidents are not only the country's principal policy chief, shaping the nation's domestic and foreign agendas, but also the most visible example of our values.”
“McGeorge Bundy was a brilliant man who'd had a meteoric academic career and was the youngest man ever to be dean of the Harvard faculty. But he was also arrogant and looked upon all sorts of people and politicians as not to be taken all that seriously.”
“In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear.”
“A president cannot sit on his hands and be seen as passive in the face of ruthless action by a foreign dictator.”
“Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public - not while he was alive, at any rate.”
“There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.”
“How different our national perspective would be had Johnson, rather than Nixon, served from 1969 to 1973.”
“Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy.”
“Television has an awful lot to do with the Kennedy mystique and the fact that he's frozen in people's minds at the age of 46, and he was handsome and personable and witty and charming.”
“President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress.”
“There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great.”
“With television, you can make anyone look larger than life.”
“William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia in April of 1841, after only one month in office, was the first Chief Executive to hide his physical frailties.”
“At the end of the day, Americans are not so keen on ideologues, people who have such fixed positions that they can't see any virtue in the other side's point of view.”
“Harry Truman wrote scathing letters, but he almost never sent them.”