Quotes from Nancy Gibbs

Lydon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.

Maybe as times get worse we get better. Our pain makes us feel other peoples too; our fear lets us practice valor; we are tense, and tender as well. And among the things we can no longer afford are things we never really wanted anyway...

Lyndon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.

If the Presidents Club had a seal, around the ring would be three words: cooperation, competition, and consolation. On the one hand, the presidents have powerful motives—personal and patriotic—to help one another succeed and comfort one another when they fail. But at the same time they all compete for history's blessing.

As a final indignity for the defeated warrior, Vice President Nixon had to preside over the roll call of the Electoral College. "This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated," he told the assembled members of Congress. "I do not think we could have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system." He got a standing ovation.

assassinated just four days before. "It was like

occupying the office Hoover once

You know the great thing about Truman," he told Goodwin, "is that once he makes up his mind about something—anything, including the A bomb—he never looks back and asks 'should I have done it? Oh! Should I have done it?' No, he just knows he made up his mind as best he could and that's that. There's no going back. I wish I had some of that quality.

Oh, I would just love to talk to you sometime, maybe we could have lunch,' she recalled. But Graham politely declined, explaining to the governor's wife that he did not dine alone with women - be they single or married. 'Oh, well, I'm sorry,' Hillary said. 'Maybe we could have a lot of people there.' Graham replied that he would think about it. ... And so five people sat down at a found table in Little Rock's ornate Capital Hotel that fall.

His manner somehow friendly and courtly at the same time.

Nixon urged Clinton to maintain his relationship with Yeltsin but make contact with other democrats in Russia. He warned Clinton away from some ultranationalists and toward those interested in liberty and reform. He pressed Clinton to replace his ambassador in Kiev and concentrate future U.S. economic aid on Ukraine, where it would matter most.

It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled," he argued. "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again . . . who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

He would say, 'I have a strong wife, you know, people don't realize how strong Ruth is.

She held my hand the whole time in our private time,' Graham recalled. 'And she was just so sweet. She is different from the Hillary you see in the media. There is a warm side to her

To one degree or another every president is haunted by those who went before, but few so literally as Johnson. No president had ever witnessed the slaying of his predecessor or endured such a brutal transfer of power.

In his final remarks to the White House staff, on the day he resigned his office, Nixon applied a version of the lesson to himself. "Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

Kennedy may not have cared what Ike had to say. But he knew he at least had to appear to. If nothing else, the image of the two of them consulting would go a long way to reassuring people that the young president was getting the advice he needed.

The only way to guarantee smart decisions, Ike believed, was to bring all the responsible parties together and have them fight it out. "I do not believe in bringing them in one at a time and therefore being more impressed by the most recent one you hear," he said later. "You must get courageous men, men of strong views and let them debate and argue with each other.

Jimmy Carter did not present himself as perfect or pious ... Neither did he compromise his understanding of the Gospel by verbal dodging or double talk. He took a political risk by being so forthright about his faith; in the end though, I believe his candor worked in his favor.' - Billy Graham

As I hung up and walked slowly back to our table," Nixon recalled, "it dawned on me that I had just participated in a probably unprecedented series of conversations. In the space of less than ten minutes, I had talked to a former President of the United States, the present president and the President-elect!" And they, in turn, had all talked not just to the current vice president, but a future president.