Michael Beschloss Quotes (25 Quotes)

Historian Michael Beschloss, an authority on presidential addresses, noted that President Bush used the expression freedom from fear, ... he sees his presidency in very grand terms.

This is not as clear as saying, 'We are going to turn back the invasion of Kuwait.' The objectives here are a little bit more complex, a little bit more difficult for a president to explain, especially in the middle of a campaign. Bill Clinton really has his job cut out for him.

If James Madison were here today, Senator Byrd is exactly the kind of leader that he hoped the American Republic in the future would bring to power someone of his stature and his learning and his understanding of history and philosophy. I think he would be very pleased.

This a person who can change the life of all of us, really, in the snap of a finger, by writing one word. And it's something that Americans are not as aware of because we don't hear that much about these people. We don't see them interact.

He had been governor of California. But he said, 'Many of the things I learned while I was governor might be very helpful to the Supreme Court,' because while the court to some extent draws on large theory, it's also a very political place. You have to form coalitions. And you also have to be pretty exposed to recent issues, and that's something that a former governor is.

You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy.

First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

People didn't stop to notice the dog that didn't bark. The dog that didn't bark was something we had feared for a half century -- that even if we won World War II, as we did, it would only be a matter of time before Germany was led by another Hitler ... That didn't happen. And it turns out that much of the reason was what Roosevelt and Truman secretly did during the war.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.

The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.

So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.

Whereas 50 years ago there was an assumption that most people who were in business were conservative, that is not an assumption that people would make anymore. No longer will you find, for instance, a Democratic president having the problem that Kennedy had in 1960 finding a name-brand Democratic businessman for his cabinet.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

...We might never have had a civil rights bill in 1964. That was one of the most important and best moments of American history,

In retrospect, I emotionally understand where Morgenthau is coming from, and I admire him for it. At the same time, Morgenthau's plan was too vindictive. In retrospect, if it had been instituted ... it would have left a vacuum for the Soviets.

Oftentimes during the period in which conventions really did business, you had situations where the delegates were divided and you would have ballot after ballot before there was a final nominee.

To kids of the 90's -- they probably remember him more of something of a tabloid celebrity,

So the result was that in many cases the conventions really did represent the underlying electoral topography of the United States.

Given the experiences he had, for him to reach adulthood and be pretty well adjusted and be thought of almost universally as a pretty nice and graceful guy, that is not a bad accomplishment,

Then you get to the last half of the 20th century, Americans are getting very skeptical about their leaders and their institutions, and another place that is affected is parties and conventions.

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.

There are two big lessons if we fight Saddam. One is that there has to be unconditional surrender. And also, if the Bush administration is going to make Iraq into a democracy, there will have to be the will to stay there.

As parties began to develop around the turn of the 19th century, you had party nominees for President nominated in caucuses made up of party members in Congress.

From the beginning of the presidential nominating conventions in the 1830's really through the 1950's, you had conventions that actually did real business.

...He might well have gone into politics, ... He felt he had the luxury of time.