Quotes from John Dickerson

I've talked to several who have been approached for short- or long-term duty in the Trump administration. The evidence of the work environment that mounts with each passing day makes them highly wary.

George W. Bush said the reason the Oval Office is round is there are no corners you can hide in.

When former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote his recent book, 'Duty', it was full of tough assessments and candor.

For Hillary Clinton, Iowa was a tough state for her in 2008, and she's put a lot of effort into fixing those mistakes.

Chess masters don't evaluate all the possible moves. They know how to discard 98 percent of the ones they could make and then focus on the best choice of the remaining lot. That's the way expertise works in other fields, too: Wise practitioners recognize familiar patterns and put their creativity, improvisation, and skill toward the marginal cases.

The 2008 battle in Iowa for the Democratic caucus was perhaps the most titanic single nominating contest in the history of modern politics.

Comey worried that the pressure from Trump to end the Flynn investigation or remove the 'cloud' of the larger investigation would 'infect' the investigation if he let others working on the case know about it. You don't need to believe the particulars of each exchange to see that this mode of management was not productive to a larger purpose.

People out there with pre-existing conditions, they are worried. Are they going to have the guarantee of coverage if they have a pre-existing condition or if they live in a state where the governor decides that's not a part of the health care, or that the prices are going to go up? That's the worry.

One of the worries about a presidency is that everybody tells you yes. Nobody helps you figure out where your blind spots are.

There's kind of a Tom Harkin aspect to Bernie Sanders, even though Harkin is supporting Secretary Clinton.

In their day, no man worthy of the presidency would ever stoop to campaigning for it. George Washington was asked to serve. Decades later, his successors were also expected to sit by the phone.

In 2008, Senator John McCain forbid his staff from using an ad that referred to his opponent Barack Obama's inflammatory former pastor Jeremiah Wright or from raising that issue in any other way. He believed it was a sneaky way to use Obama's race against him.

CBS's Major Garrett writes in 'National Journal' about a new version of the 'stray voltage' theory of communication in which the president purposefully overstates his case knowing that it will create controversy.

Mitt Romney won the GOP nomination on a platform of 'self-deportation' for illegal immigrants - and the Obama team never let Hispanics forget it. The Obama campaign also branded Republicans with Romney's ill-chosen words about 47 percent of Americans as the party of uncaring millionaires.

Michael Flynn was forced to resign, we are told, because he told a big lie. But what about the little ones?

We've seen, in Washington, both sides say they don't want to give up much of anything.

That's what politics is. It's the story of what's happening, what does it mean, what's the conclusion, who are the interesting characters?

The challenge with Donald Trump is that he'll deny things he said the day before or even in the same interview. And then sometimes when you try and talk about a fact that he misstated or something that he said out loud that he now disagrees with himself on, it's very frustrating.

The culture of undermining sends signals of disrespect. This approach not only saps motivation and undermines teamwork, it also lowers the motivation to work extra hours anticipating what can go wrong.

In the 2012 campaign, the president successfully transformed the most intense conservative positions into liabilities on immigration and the role of government.

If you have children and want to give your future self a present, record their laughter as toddlers. When they're older and away from you, you might find that clip in the middle of the day, and it will transport you as surely as if you had a time machine.

I believe that Jesus Christ existed and that He died for my sins. And I believe that what He said in the Gospels is a model for the way I should try to lead my life and that I will always fall short of that and, therefore, need Him to redeem me.

When the campaign ends, and you are home, the alarm clock is the same, but you don't know where to start after it goes off: expense reports, new stories, the crusted paint cans that have to go to the hazardous-waste disposal site, the wiper blade on the Honda that has gone droopy.

I believe in Jesus Christ.