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 wasn’t an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.
Public scandals are America’s favorite parlor sport. Learning about the flaws and misdeeds of the rich and famous seems to satisfy our egalitarian yearnings.
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?
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.
As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership.
John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems… spastic colitis.
Concealing one’s true medical condition from the voting public is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency.
Whatever the long-term legal prospects for same-sex marriage, President Obama’s willingness to put the matter front and center in an election year can at least make him a candidate for inclusion in Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.
Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson’s legislative success on civil rights.
Don’t be intimidated by people who seem to be experts. Hear their points of view and get their judgements. But at the end of day, you’ve got to make a judgement because it’s not their life that’s going to be affected so much as your future.