A Quote by David Herbert Donald
Well, it seems to me Lincoln, I suppose, is kind of a model of a particular sort of presidency, a presidency that first of all is elected by a minority of the votes.
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That particular story ["The Pyramid and the Ass"] was written during the dark days of the Bush years. George W. Bush had just been "re-elected" (or elected for the first time, depending on how you count the stolen election) and it seemed like the horror of his presidency would last forever.
To me, the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency were not prizes to be won, but a duty to be done.
The presidency of the United States is a very unique elected position. So if anything merits a longer vetting process, the presidency does to some extent. In general our election cycles are too long, but this job is so consequential that I don't think it's a bad thing to give people more time to get to know you.
Lincoln was able to say, you know, "It will make me very unhappy if I lose the presidency, but I'm committed to larger things." If you look at candidates and say this is someone who can be happy to go back to their family or they have larger convictions. Franklin Roosevelt jeopardized his presidency by telling Americans in 1940, "We might have to fight Hitler." He loved being president, but he loved defending freedom more.
There is one thing which we should have exceedingly clear in our minds. Neither the President of the Church, nor the First Presidency, nor the united voice of the First Presidency and the Twelve will ever condone the use of ReddiWhip on pie.
I am very glad as well that it is a presidency built on a campaign that emphasized ideas. I hope it will be a presidency that will enable everybody to be part of and proud of.
You know Lincoln's famous remark about "God must have loved the common people, because he made so many of them?" Well, you are not going to get people's votes nowadays by calling 'em common. Lincoln might have said it, but I bet it was not until after he was elected.
Election victories increasingly depend on factors other than who votes, or tries to vote, and for whom. In 2000, the presidency was awarded by the Supreme Court, pre-empting the count of thousands of Florida votes.
Eventually, Nixon ran a very centrist presidency, not a Goldwater conservative presidency.
Technology has had more of an impact on the presidency and how the presidency communicates than anything.
The only way to tyrantproof the presidency is not to elect tyrants to the presidency.
As you approach the presidency, no one seems worthy of it, since it wasn't designed for a human in the first place.
The Grand Old Party's abiding affection for a 'bigger and better' presidency isn't entirely logical. After all, the Obama presidency commenced with an effort to reenact the Hundred Days. Yet President Obama's first-term economic performance itself was not 'big' but mediocre - tiny, even.
Even though Lyndon Johnson's presidency was in many ways scarred forever by the war in Vietnam, and destroyed in a lot of ways, he - as a character - was even larger than his presidency. Being able to get to know him well, that firsthand relationship with this large character, I think is what drew me to writing books about presidents.
This is a column collection, or as one colleague called it, "history in real time," recounting my perspective on the highs and lows of this presidency from an African-American perspective. More than simply a column collection, the book has a substantial introduction that frames the [Barack] Obama presidency, explores the way Obama was treated by the political establishment and also how this first black president treated "his" people. In the epilogue, I use numbers to tell the story of African-American gains and losses during this presidency.
The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.
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