Best 29 quotes of David Pietrusza on MyQuotes

A lot of people here some South in your mouth, and they automatically think you're dumb. They think if you talk funny, you are funny. – Lloyd Hand

As the pace of the campaign quickened, politics began to clash with Kennedy's innate sense of responsibility. – Arthur Schlesinger

Be civilized. Grudges are for Neanderthals. – Hubert Humphrey

Eisenhower on LBJ: "He hadn't got the depth of mind nor the breath vision to carry great responsibility.

Eleanor Roosevelt on the changes in John F. Kennedy that led her to drop her opposition to his nomination for president: "He has the qualities of a scholar, and a sense of history. I had the feeling that he was the man who can learn. I like him better than I ever had before because he seemed so little caulk-sure, and I think he has a mind that is open to new ideas.

For Jack Kennedy, who only made campaigning LOOK easy, it was, in fact, anything but.

Harry S Truman despised settled conventions.

Henry Cabot Lodge was like medicine, good for you, but hard to take. – Teddy White

In front of an audience of Protestant clergy, the Catholic JFK "was drawing strength from his vulnerability.

In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, "He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases.

John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.

Manners matter as this author memorably illustrates. Eleanor Roosevelt stubbornly kept her clout behind Adlai Stevenson was an almost visceral resistance to John F. Kennedy's charms as a newcomer to power. The sudden death of Eleanor's granddaughter shortly before JFK was to meet with her suggested that rapprochement was impossible. Kennedy's genuine gentle manners toward the grieving former first lady won her over and may have shifted the balance in an extremely close election.

Nixon wanted view and advice brought to him through intermediaries. He wanted information filtered as it came to him – and he wanted his filters to filter his will back to those whom he must direct.

Nixon was by nature a excluder. Halderman like to exclude people. When Nixon's need met Halderman's abilities, you had the most perfect formula for disaster. – Jim Shepley

No matter what office LBJ assumed he lifted greater than when he found it.

Organizing a coup was not the same as wanting one.

Politics look very simple to the outsider whether he is a businessman or a soldier – it is only when you get into it that all the angles and hard work become apparent. James Forrestal

Presidential campaign observer Teddy White on the second Kennedy-Nixon debate in which the candidates spoke from separate television studios: "It was as if, separated by comments from his adversary, Richard Nixon was more at ease and could speak directly to the nation that lay between them.

Reporters heard words but not poetry, saw old politicians but not new heroes.

Richard Nixon coveted, to the point of obsession, a controversy-free, stage-managed coronation.

The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt.

The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. – Calvin Coolidge

There are really two essential things in campaigning. First, you must be in good humor. If you're going to be a raffle, you are to stay home. Second, you are to make sense in your speeches. These aren't the two things you must do. Unless you're saying, if you can be in good humor when you're exhausted. – Henry Cabot Lodge

Though there is no evil in righteousness, there is in self-righteousness,

TR on using extramarital accusations against Wilson: "It won't work. You can't cast a man as Romeo who looks and acts like an apothecary's clerk.

Wednesday's glory had become Thursday's ashes.

What we saw in Richard Nixon's face was the panic in his soul. – Richard Goodwin

While JFK had made the sale on a political level, he had not yet completed it on an emotional one.

Woodrow Wilson intimate Edward House urged that his boss never first be approached by argument. Instead, the President could be made most receptive by laying a groundwork of 'common hatred".