Quotes About Presidency

There's never been a presidency that's done so much in such a short period of time, and we haven't even started the big work yet.

Richard Nixon built his presidency on his notorious 'Southern strategy.'

I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can.

A healthy environment, a strong economy and energy independent America - that would be the purpose of my presidency, is break the strangle hold that people enjoy on fossil fuels who hate our guts.

The American people on the ground need a clearer, stronger, Lyndon B. Johnson-type voice from their president.

The modern presidency, as expressed in the policies of the administration of George W. Bush, provides the strongest piece of evidence that we are governed by a fundamentally different Constitution from that of the framers.

Because of the structure of the contemporary American party system, every president is polarizing.

Economic inequality is less troubling if you live in a country where any child, no matter how humble his or her origins, can grow up to be president.

I don't understand why, to rise to the level of being president of my country, one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it's been held by a long line of monsters. We don't have to support our administrations to love our country.

What comes into the Oval Office are not the good or easy decisions. The easy decisions are made elsewhere. The things that make it to the Oval are always the hard ones.

When he entered the Oval Office - by fate, not by design - Citizen Ford knew that he was not perfect, just as he knew he was not perfect when he left. But what president ever was?

After the 1960s and '70s, there were real doubts about whether a mortal man could handle the country's highest office. It had destroyed Johnson, corrupted Nixon, and overwhelmed Ford and Carter.

The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.

Lincoln in his element

In 1989, Ronald Reagan's final year in the White House

It seems very unfortunate that in order to secure political preference, people are made Vice President who are never intended, neither by party nor by the Lord, to be Presidents.

All doors opened for the leader of the free world and he strode into the White House like he owned it. Which unofficially he did. Though financed by the American taxpayers, it was really his house, his chopper, his jumbo jet. No one got to come for a visit or go for a ride if he didn't say it was okay.

I could never run for President of the United States. All that handshaking of people I didn't give a damn about would kill me. Ten minutes here. Ten minutes there…Not for me.

Great Britain and the United States all one? Yes, I am all for that, and you mean me to run for President?

The university has become the multiversity and the nature of the presidency has followed this change…. The president of the multiversity is leader, educator, wielder of power, pump; he is also officeholder, caretaker, inheritor, consensus seeker, persuader, bottleneck. But he is mostly a mediator.

But I had to look at something else beyond the man—the people who surrounded him—and I felt that Kennedy was surrounded by better people. It was on that basis that I felt that Kennedy would make the best president.

Thou great democratic God!… who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a throne!

Alice thought of poor Hillary Clinton. Imagine having the whole world know that your husband had cheated on you in such a messy way. You would have thought being president of the United States should have been a pretty distracting sort of job.

The most remarkable thing about Calvin Coolidge is that he served for 67 months, and when he left office, the budget was lower than he came in. In real terms - in nominal terms with vanilla on top - he cut the budget year over year.