151 Quotes by Robert Dallek

At the start of first terms, presidents invariably have a measure of goodwill.

Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else.

I see a direct line between Kennedy and Richard Nixon and the opening to China and the detente with the Soviet Union.

Television has an awful lot to do with the Kennedy mystique and the fact that he's frozen in people's minds at the age of 46, and he was handsome and personable and witty and charming.

F.D.R. had an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions in 1933 when he drove 15 major bills through the Congress, and super majorities in the House and the Senate in 1935 when he won passage of Social Security.

The nation should be able to remove by an orderly constitutional process any president with an unyielding commitment to failed policies and an inability to renew the country's hope.

For style and for creating a mood of optimism and hope - Kennedy on that count is as effective as any president the country has had in its history.

Foreign policy - dealing as it does with the most charged political subjects of all, the safety and dignity of the nation - will always be political terrain particularly vulnerable to distortion and demagoguery.

By the time a second term rolls around, the illusions about a president have largely evaporated.