The Cold War is over. The kind of authority that the presidents asserted during the Cold War has now been diminished. – Robert Dallek
As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership. – Robert Dallek
Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president’s primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration. – Robert Dallek
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. – Robert Dallek
Clinton’s egregious act of self-indulgence was outdone by an impeachment based not on constitutionally required high crimes and misdemeanors but on a vindictive determination to bring down a president who had offended self-righteous moralists eager to put a different political agenda in place. – Robert Dallek
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. – Robert Dallek
Historians partial to Kennedy see matters differently from those partial to L.B.J. Vietnam has become a point of contention in defending and criticizing J.F.K. – Robert Dallek
During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson’s group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson. – Robert Dallek
When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks. – Robert Dallek
John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems… spastic colitis. – Robert Dallek
I think the public can t accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. They don t want to believe the world is that chaotic. It is. – Robert Dallek
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. – Robert Dallek
Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office. – Robert Dallek
George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war. – Robert Dallek
Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung – a maintenance project of the first order. – Robert Dallek
A presidential candidate’s great desire is to be seen as pragmatic, and they hope their maneuvering and shifting will be seen in pursuit of some higher purpose. It doesn’t mean they are utterly insincere. – Robert Dallek
The CIA’s official history of the Bay of Pigs operation is filled with dramatic and harrowing details that not only lay bare the strategic, logistical, and political problems that doomed the invasion, but also how the still-green President John F. Kennedy scrambled to keep the U.S. from entering into a full conflict with Cuba. – Robert Dallek
Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history. – Robert Dallek
In the late 19th century, the Populists – a protest movement of mainly disaffected farmers and workers – threatened to overturn established authority. – Robert Dallek
Vice President Biden’s surprising declaration of unqualified support for gay marriage seems to have forced President Obama into a public endorsement of a controversial social issue. It is difficult not to suspect that Biden’s pronouncement aimed to give the president some political cover. – Robert Dallek
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. – Robert Dallek
It’s always valuable for someone running for president… to have as much bipartisan support as possible. – Robert Dallek
When President Obama first unveiled his gun control proposals recommending a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and better background checks, there seemed to be momentum behind the effort. But then the proposals ran into a wall. – Robert Dallek
A national government using New Deal programs and the massive defense spending beginning with World War II and continuing through the Cold War was Johnson’s vehicle for expanding the Southern economy and making it, as he hoped, one of the more prosperous regions of the country. – Robert Dallek
Truman is now seen as a near-great president because he put in place the containment doctrine boosted by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and NATO, which historians now see as having been at the center of American success in the cold war. – Robert Dallek
