The argument that goes on now is about `Let's not play the blame game, because we need to get on with the business of caring for people,' ... But the rejoinder to that, at least by thinking people, is that if you had people who failed at their jobs, you need to look now. Do you want them to stay in place and continue doing a lousy job? |
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 number of presidential biographies that make it on [bestseller lists] is astonishing. My Kennedy book [published in 2003] was on there for eight weeks. I'm an academic; I've never had anything like that before. |
There was a president who was much less healthy than the public image of him conveyed. If [the public] knew about it in 1960, I doubt that he would have been elected. |
There's no question that these sorts of television images have a big impact on people and in many respects shape reactions to the White House, |
There's the hidden history with the abuse of power, the fact that you've had so much in the way of secret government. |
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. |
War kills reform. It consumes the energy of the administration, the public, the press. This is what the focus is on. |
What they are coming up against now is the limits of partisanship, the limits of dividing the country so decisively. |
When I read about the hospitalizations, my eyes widened, |
With the end of the Cold War now, there is much less premium, I think, on the idea that you have to have someone with a foreign policy or military background. |