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. |
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 can't see how they're going to turn this around. |
He restored a kind of confidence in the presidency, and a better mood in the United States about politics and politicians and about the presidency. |
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 he's really undermined his credibility at this point, and it really saddles him with the kind of problems that Johnson and Nixon faced. |
I think he's 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 most of all for this administration it's a way to strike a kind of high minded note in a political contest that we've already been struggling over in 2004. |
It didn't work for Johnson, and it's not working for Bush. |
It's a dramatic turnabout. Events have overtaken him. |
It's cultural values, and you're going to see, I think, both candidates stressing more and more their religious faith, their family values. |
Kennedy was very sensitive to this question of ever using nuclear weapons, |
Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back? |
Presidents by six years have been there long enough for the media and the country to see their flaws. |
Reagan restored a sense of hope, a sense of uplift about the presidency. Now it's ironic, because he preached the idea that government was not the solution, government was the problem. And yet, when he left the White House, he had kind of rekindled affection for the presidency. |
That's why pragmatism is such a central ingredient of an effective presidency. If you're not pragmatic, not responsive to changing realities, then you don't succeed. |