Preston

“I have often wondered about a paradox in American government: Every four years, voters elect a president and in California a governor, the only officeholders elected by all the people; then, the same people in their individual districts turn around and elect a legislature and congress that is often controlled by the opposing party, enabling it to prevent the president or governor from carrying out the things they elected him or her to do.”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“I don’t think we’ll solve the problem of the deficit until three things happen: We need more discipline on spending in Congress. We need a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget. And we need to give our presidents a line-item veto.”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“all of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government. . .”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“The Americans, the Scottish economist Adam Smith warned, “feel in themselves at this moment a degree of importance which, perhaps, the greatest subjects in Europe scarce feel.… [They] are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves will become, and which indeed seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.”
― Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777