Quotes from Richard Ben Cramer

The average-guy routine works only so much, and then people begin to want something more.

I'm enough of a patriot to think that the American public makes good choices.

When your friend causes you trouble, a president gets rid of those friends.

People think of DiMaggio as the exemplar of a 'golden age,' and in some ways, he was. But in the most fundamental ways, he was really the first modern athletic superstar because, number one, he ushered in the era of big money; and number two, he never did anything except that - he never really took another job in another industry.

It's like a drug, the feeling you could make a difference....

The white men on the Brinkley set were trying not to grin, like cheap lawyers at a ten-car pileup: Uh, did that mean Senator Dole didn't think all the facts were out? Didn't he believe the White House, that North and Poindexter were the only ones who knew? The Bobster dropped an eyebrow and rasped: "Aghh, don't think Ripley'd believe that.

Wide open! Some of these North Dakota towns made Russell, Kansas, look urban.)

Reagan kept saying the deficit was Public Enemy Number One. But then he sent up a budget that would have pumped red ink up over the window sills.

And he got to this woman, came up from behind ... ("So, folks, look me over. If you like what you see ...") and gently, but decidedly, he put his hands on her. In Council Bluffs, Iowa! He got both hands onto her shoulders, while he talked to the crowd over her head, like it was her and him, through thick and thin.

The fact was, the Senate's "advise and consent" was intended, from the start, to forestall the President from remaking the Court in his image. The Senate had, for most of its two hundred years, scrutinized the philosophy and politics of nominees—not just their competence, or honesty. And when a President picked a justice for reasons of ideology, it was the Senate's duty to examine that ideology.

with loyalty oaths waving as weapons in the hands of the know-nothing right, the values of liberal education seemed to hang in the balance in 1952.

They called in medics, but two got killed trying to get to Dole.

In the bad old seventies, when Mondale was Veep, and the government still worried about things like fuel and noise, the Vice President flew on small, efficient DC-9S.

But now, in the age of Reagan, Bush mostly flew a big old 707, the Stratoliner, a Cadillac-with-tailfins kind of plane, so heavy, noisy, and greedy for fuel that no commercial airline would be permitted to land one at an American airport.

Then he dipped his finger into Dole's shredded jacket, and with Dole's blood traced an "M" on his forehead. That'd let the medics know he'd had a shot—another would kill him, overdose ... if a medic ever got there ... if McBryar could spot one

That's what made it worse, in the end ... when he found out. Nixon had lied to him, personally.

Father Diny interrupted to tell Joe a story about the World War II pilot with this slogan on his plane: Non illegitimi carborundum. Biden looked at him quizzically ... he didn't remember much Latin. "Loosely translated," Father Diny continued, "it means: Don't let the bastards get you down.

Even a year later, Bush remarked to a friend, with uncharacteristic bluntness: "I wouldn't care if I never see Richard Nixon again.

Yeah, they told me, just be yourself ... so I did. Maybe that was the problem.

Anyway, there were no bigger fans in town than Chet and Bub Dawson. (Chet was a diehard K-State fan. He'd claim: "If KU was playin' Russia, I'd root for Russia.")

They didn't ... and by the end of the campaign, Bush was well known as a worm, a weanling woodlouse, a weedy wort in the garden of politics, a wan, whimpering ... well, it was war.

In fact, Reagan couldn't remember his grandchildren's names, and he had no friends, only the husbands of Nancy's friends.

George Bush knew five times more about the governments of the world—his own included—than Ronald Reagan ever would.

The ministerial students were the worst—they were maybe one-third to one-half of each class, and this was their trade school. They came to learn the right words, all the proper formulae ... which they wrote down and memorized from the lectures of their profs.