Quotes from John Dickerson

There's the human side of people who are in public life that connects people. Whether it's favorable or unfavorable, it gives them some connection with the person who's onstage, and I think those connections are edifying.

Not everybody gets a chance to go fly around the country and spend time in places with people who aren't like them, where, again and again, you realize we're all generally alike.

In 1840, William Henry Harrison is the first one to really campaign as a candidate, and the campaigns were totally frivolous. I mean, people were drinking hard cider all day. They were big parades; no one was debating the issues.

When she died, Mom left me her letters and journals. Windows into things I would have been too young to understand when she was alive, or too busy, or too much of a know-it-all.

The most important connection I can see between my faith and my work is that in the progress of my day, I try to be restrained and mindful of every person's humanity and of the overwhelming challenge of pride.

Politics is not the nicest business, but there are still times when people do the right thing.

We have gone from holding the door out of courtesy to standing before it out of obliviousness.

We want our movies instantly. We order our groceries at lunchtime and expect them to arrive in time for dinner. We punch up cars to deliver us to our whims. The largest companies in America, from Amazon to Uber to Facebook, want to fill the air with buzzing drones dropping from the skies whatever you want and more of it. Manna is now always on the delivery menu.

That a [presidential] candidate would do whatever it took to get power is now proof that a candidate is fit for the job—a perfect reversal of the founders' intent.

Whataboutism does not work with the police, judges, or our mothers. If you work in customer service, do not try this. If you work for an airline, when a customer comes to you complaining that the airline has lost his family's luggage, it will not lead to job retention if you say, as a representative of the airline, that the other airlines lose luggage too.

A PRESIDENT WEARS MASKS

She later said, "Sex to Jack [Kennedy] meant no more than a cup of coffee." How did she know? Did she ever have coffee with him? I have no reason to think so, but in that picture, the president looks like he's about to start the percolator.

the founders believed a president should cool the passions of the people, not inflame them, because the national temperature would have a direct effect on the health of the republic. A president who was acting presidential would constrain his or her behavior accordingly.

If a president whipped up the crowd, "the passions…not the reason, of the public would sit in judgment," wrote Madison in Federalist No. 49. "But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government."37

Americans tell pollsters they want bipartisan cooperation. But those who actually vote don't value that as much—or they define "bipartisanship" as acquiescence by the other party to what their party believes.

It was as though in a community susceptible to alcoholism, the Russians placed liquor bottles on every doorstep, and the press, the public, and Donald Trump encouraged everyone to open the door.

Nearly 60 percent of the American economy is tied up in foreign trade, which means millions of U.S. jobs and families are linked to the undulations of the global market.31

His rough tongue is a sign of a president who is dismantling the traditional presidency.

Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable," President Obama explained to the author Michael Lewis. "Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. ... You can't be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out." Thomas Jefferson explained this to his secretary of the treasury: "What is good in this case cannot be effected. We have, therefore, only to find out what will be least bad.

The swashbuckling independence of my childhood was not all good, and as a father, I'm puzzling out how to be part of my children's lives rather than shoehorning them into mine. But there's a risk that I'll overcompensate, of course.

You're basically like glass: People see the candidates through you.

When the news broke that John McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer, the outpouring of well wishes all hailed his toughness.

If we practice hard enough, we can become thoroughly interested in even the simplest things of daily life, the way a child would. The smallest things would become so meaningful, they might even be worth a few words or a photograph, whatever method you use to capture them.

Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.