Quotes from Michael Beschloss

Presidents fall into second-term slumps for different reasons.

The things we obsess about today, in 40 years seem trivial.

Troubled celebrities are a dime a dozen.

Not to be pompous about it - my thing in life is to write history and not to chat on TV 24 hours a day.

During his last 18 months in office, Eisenhower flew to Asia, Europe, and Latin America and deployed his war hero's popularity to seek new friends for America while trying to improve relations with Moscow. By the time Ike left office, most Americans had forgotten their anger over losing the space race to the Soviets.

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.

American political scions evoke a central contradiction in our thinking. We believe - or say we do - in nurture, not nature. Yet we are comforted by the aristocratic notion that leadership might run in the bloodlines.

We insist that ours is a government of laws, not men, but it is striking how often large historical forces pivot on something so unpredictable as the continued good health of a politician.

Kissinger's monopoly on this historical record has driven many scholars to distraction. Groups of lawyers, scholars, journalists and archivists have used pronunciamento, lawsuit, and other crowbars in a usually vain effort to open Kissinger's Library of Congress cache.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.

The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.