David Pietrusza > Quotes

“Though there is no evil in righteousness, there is in self-righteousness,”
― David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents

“Truman makes friends without influencing people,' noted Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 'Dewey influences people without making friends.”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“Losers break the rules. There's no point in obeying them because if you obey the unwritten rules of civility, you're going to lose anyway. So why not just do what you can?' - Zachary Karabell”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“But even a wonderful soloist needs a song. Even a pitch-perfect voice needs a message.”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“Every presidential nominee says his vice president will be given a serious, important role in his new administration. But it almost never materializes. A strong, totally self-centered politician like Tom Dewey sharing his hard-won power with a vice president? Don''t count on it.' - David Brinkley”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“Author points out in Woodrow Wilson the flipside of the positive we might call big picture vision. He observes that as college president Wilson resorted to the language of a national crusade when he met resistance in a local, academic issue.”
― David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents

“TR on using extramarital accusations against Wilson: "It won't work. You can't cast a man as Romeo who looks and acts like an apothecary's clerk.”
― David Pietrusza

“It came down to so many factors: an underdog who refused to surrender, a presumed victor who refused to fight, disgruntled Democrats - on the left and right - who, by deserting their party, merely strengthened it, and fearful Republican farmers, who in the end, proved more farmer than Republican.”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“At Oklahoma City, the Hardings visited with oilman Jake Hamon, now in line for Secretary of the Interior. Hamon’s private life, as lively as Harding’s, was far less private. Jake had taken up with redheaded Clara Barton Smith. He appointed Clara his secretary, married her off to his nephew, Frank Hamon, and then dispatched Frank to the West Coast, leaving Jake and Clara to live blissfully as man and niece. Harding ordered Hamon to dump Clara if he wanted a role in Washington. The Hardings departed; a Harding transition official arrived. Hamon hosted a dinner for him, and Clara—angry at the thought of being jettisoned—threw a duck in Hamon’s face. They argued in their rooms. If Hamon abandoned her, Clara wanted cash. Hamon struck her with a chair. Clara shot him, and four days later he died. The news reached the Hardings at Balboa, Panama. “Too bad he had that one fault,” Warren mused, “that admiration for women.”
― David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents

“Be civilized. Grudges are for Neanderthals. – Hubert Humphrey”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“Never far removed from the progressive consciousness was a question that was never easily answered: of what value was it to punish offending Democrats, if one merely replaced them with infinitely more retrograde Republicans?”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“Yet Barkley drew back. Perhaps he, like Harry Truman, knew that the quiet power of incumbency easily overcomes the noise of crowds and bands.”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“Woodrow Wilson intimate Edward House urged that his boss never first be approached by argument. Instead, the President could be made most receptive by laying a groundwork of 'common hatred".”
― David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents

“John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“To Dewey, if brevity was the soul of wit, stagecraft was the very center of politics.”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“The right to resign is one of the cherished privileges of a free man; the willingness to resign, when principle and the public interest are served, is always present in the public-spirited and the self-respecting. They look upon resigning, not as a cowardice and quitting and a personal disaster, but as the ultimate guarantee of their useful influence and of their personal dignity. - Walter Lippmann”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“Politics look very simple to the outsider whether he is a businessman or a soldier – it is only when you get into it that all the angles and hard work become apparent. James Forrestal”
― David Pietrusza, 1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year that Transformed America

“Nixon was by nature a excluder. Halderman like to exclude people. When Nixon's need met Halderman's abilities, you had the most perfect formula for disaster. – Jim Shepley”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“As the pace of the campaign quickened, politics began to clash with Kennedy's innate sense of responsibility. – Arthur Schlesinger”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“John F. Kennedy "is, in reality, a deeply serious man, reflective in his mental habits, historically minded, and given to seeing men and nations and events in the sobering context that history provides.

As a human being, he is often humorous, easily bored by total routine but open to all fresh experiences, careless of the superficialities of life, warmly loyal to his friends, and oddly detached about himself. His most curious trait, in fact, is his way of discussing his most vital affairs with the dry humor and cool analytical remoteness that most people reserve for the affairs of others. – Joseph Alsop”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“A lot of people here some South in your mouth, and they automatically think you're dumb. They think if you talk funny, you are funny. – Lloyd Hand”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“Reporters heard words but not poetry, saw old politicians but not new heroes.”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha".”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“Richard Nixon coveted, to the point of obsession, a controversy-free, stage-managed coronation.”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“For Jack Kennedy, who only made campaigning LOOK easy, it was, in fact, anything but.”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“It involves no disrespect for Mrs. Truman to say that her daughter gets a bigger hand than she does,' observed Richard Rovere. 'This country may be run by and for mothers, but its goddesses are daughters. Margaret's entrance comes closer than anything else to bringing down the house.”
― David Pietrusza

“Eisenhower on LBJ: "He hadn't got the depth of mind nor the breath vision to carry great responsibility.”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. – Calvin Coolidge”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“JFK had to act before his fragile body betrayed him.”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies

“JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting.”
― David Pietrusza, 1960--LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies