Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else.
— 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.
How many State of the Union addresses do people remember? They don't resonate that way.
There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.
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.
There is a line between scurrilous nonsense and serious discussion that laps over, especially in this day and age when you've got all this electronic media and these blogs and this kind of fanatical impulse to bring down the opposing candidate.
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.
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.
Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?
At the start of first terms, presidents invariably have a measure of goodwill.
Unity is Obama's theme.
The 1890s was an intensely patriotic decade for Americans. It was a time of neo-imperialism, when the European powers and the United States were establishing their flags around the globe.
Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy.
American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.
Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union.
There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great.
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.
Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.
Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country.
The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate.
At the end of their first years, there are few people who would have predicted that Truman would be elected in 1948 or that Reagan would get a second term. It's always premature to make some kind of categorical judgment after the first year in office.
With television, you can make anyone look larger than life.
If nobody trusts you as president, then you can't get anything done.
What makes war interesting for Americans is that we don't fight war on our soil, we don't have direct experience of it, so there's an openness about the meanings we give to it.
Congress becomes the public voice of opposition.
I think experience is a terribly overrated idea when it comes to thinking about who should become president.
