Quotes by Robert Dallek

“A crisis is an opportunity for a president to step forward and exert effective leadership, and establish his credentials as a significant occupant of the Oval Office.”

“Kennedy was very sensitive to this question of ever using nuclear weapons,”

“He was able to put them on the trail of the truth to find out just exactly what was going on in this scandal.”

“I think hes really undermined his credibility at this point, and it really saddles him with the kind of problems that Johnson and Nixon faced.”

“These crises are such a heavy burden, and they are so self-inflicted, except for the court vacancies, that if he is not very careful and tries to put across someone who is seen as an ultraconservative, he is going to touch off a conflagration in the Senate.”

“I think hes really undermined his credibility at this point, and it really saddles him with the kind of problems that Johnson and Nixon faced. These crises are such a heavy burden, and they are so self-inflicted, except for the court vacancies, that if he is not very careful and tries to put across someone who is seen as an ultraconservative, he is going to touch off a conflagration in the Senate.”

“Thats why pragmatism is such a central ingredient of an effective presidency. If youre not pragmatic, not responsive to changing realities, then you dont succeed.”

“as he put it. Still, he added: Bush did make a comeback then. But the country was more receptive to his kind of leadership. I cant see how theyre going to turn this around.”

“Theres no question that these sorts of television images have a big impact on people and in many respects shape reactions to the White House,”

“The images that have been constantly on television--a city that is under water, people who have been displaced, sobbing, crying, the evacuation of people--you can have this kind of spin-doctoring and have people say all sorts of things, but I think these realities on the ground [matter].”

The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.

JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.

Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history.

Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time.

Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasnt an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.

Public scandals are Americas favorite parlor sport. Learning about the flaws and misdeeds of the rich and famous seems to satisfy our egalitarian yearnings.

John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer.

Once the public loses confidence in a presidents leadership at a time of war, once they dont trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?

Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy.