Robert Dallek Quotes
- 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…
- It is very difficult for [people] to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy.
- ... 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…
- Presidents by six years have been there long enough for the media and the country to see their flaws.
- Lyndon Johnson is not a comfortable model for President Obama to imitate. He is an all-but-forgotten president - pilloried for the failed war in Vietnam…
- Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.
- The greatest presidents have been those who demonstrated astute judgment in times of crisis - often despite the advice they were getting.
- 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…
- The Bay of Pigs was an operation the United States endorsed. That was a preventive operation. We were afraid that Castro was going to subvert…
- True, most Americans give lip service to the proposition that even the most exalted among us have their flaws, but we are eager to believe…
- Presidential aspirants reach for the highest office to satisfy some yearning for greatness or even immortality.
- Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.
- I think experience is a terribly overrated idea when it comes to thinking about who should become president.
- 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.
- Congress becomes the public voice of opposition.
- There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great.
- 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…
- Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union.
- American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.
- With television, you can make anyone look larger than life.