FDR once said he was like a cat, that he would pounce and then relax. That's much harder to do in the 24-hour cable world, because it's almost like the press demands of you to be saying something or doing something every day.
The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.
There are but a handful of times in the history of our country when there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge.
My books are written with a strong chronological spine.
That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.
'The bully pulpit' is somewhat diminished in our age of fragmented attention and fragmented media.
Journalists were at the forefront. From the Civil War until the early 1900s, nothing was being done to solve the problems of the Industrial Age.
I write about presidents. That means I write about guys - so far. I'm interested in the people closest to them, the people they love and the people they've lost... I don't want to limit it to what they did in the office, but what happens at home and in their interactions with other people.
Roosevelt's strength was that he understood he would never get anything through the Republican old guard, his party, unless the public pressured Congress.
I really believe that what happens one day affects the next, and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning, play by play, it built up to its natural climax.
Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.
Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.
I think after Sandy Hook, when Obama went out, and he talked a lot about gun control and met with the parents, there was a sense that something was going to happen. But then, I guess, the power of special interests was greater than public sentiment.
I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.'
I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.
I wish we could go back to the time when the private lives of our public figures were relevant only if they directly affected their public responsibilities.
A lot of times when people are on campaigns, it can be like a movie set.
Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.
We've got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We're not gonna get the best people in public life if we don't do that.
The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.
