Status Updates From The American President

"...all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and on conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" (444).

"Elected governor in 1978, thirty-two-year-old Bill Clinton bristled with ideas and energy. But he also made a series of political miscalculations. By seeming not to listen to his constituents, by raising licensing fees, and by giving an impression of intellectual arrogance, in 1980 he lost his bid for reelection...'I think [the loss] was good for me...If you survive it, you normally come out ahead'" (432).

"Roosevelt's ambitions cast a pall over the second half of Taft's presidency, as did the disastrous midterm elections, which went decisively to the Democrats. As the pressures mounted, Taft reacted by overeating more and more, eventually ballooning to 355 pounds. To escape the anxiety, he played endless rounds of golf, took long trips across the country, and grew crankier by the day" (420).

"...there was the subject dearest to his heart: American expansionsim and 'manifest destiny.' Polk was determined, here too, to carry on a balanced national program, dividing his efforts between the Northwest and the Southwest. His twin goals were the settlement of the Oregon boundary with Britain, and the acquisition of Mexican-owned California, a subject closely linked to the Texas issue" (410).

"The Constitutional Convention was Madison's moment of special destiny, just as the Declaration of Independence had been Thomas Jefferson's. It was Madison who proposed the all-important Virginia Plan, outlining a tripartite government with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches, with the legislature divided into a House and Senate" (401-2).

"'It's very difficult to psychoanalyze oneself,' Richard Nixon once said. 'Most people would give me rather low grades as far as "charisma" and "gregariousness" and all that sort of thing that the politician is supposed to have...But the essence of every great leader I have known - and I'm not saying I'm great - he was a lonely man'" (386).

"Roosevelt let solitude and open spaces and intense physical labor heal his broken heart. But more important, he taught himself how to channel his aggression into a new form of energy with a purpose. 'The only thing...to do is treat the past as past'" (375).

"'I remember well my early days,' Cleveland once wrote 'I have always felt that my training as a minister's son has been more valuable to me than any other incident of my life'" (361).

"At six feet one inch, and weighing less than 140 pounds, Andrew Jackson cut a strange figure in the presidency. He wore thick coats to lend the illusion of substance, and he was often sick in the White House, coughing up blood caused by the old dueling bullet still lodged near his heart. To ease his pain he sometimes bled himself, using his penknife to open the veins" (352).

"His father, Prescott Bush, was a successful businessman who went on in later life to become a Senator. Bush credited him with passing on his core values: 'Tell the truth, be honest, work hard, try to see the other guy's point of view while sticking to your own principles. These were truisms, you might say that my three brothers and my sister and I had inculcated into us growing up'" (337).

"...when the Senate rejected the treaty, Wilson's great dream for a new world order was shattered. 'I have given my vitality, and almost my life, for the League of Nations,' Wilson wrote. 'If I were not a Christian I think I should go mad'" (327).

"McKinley took an active role in negotiating the Treaty of Paris, and forcefully stood up to the Speaker of the House, who opposed it. By so doing, he established the modern presidency as he preeminent force in American national government" (314).

"The last of the original Virginia presidents, he possessed none of Thomas Jefferson's eloquence, or James Madison's genius, or George Washington's stature. But James Monroe had presided over a vast expansion of the American empire. He had spoken out as if the United States were a world power, and as he did so, it began to become one" (309).

"To Reagan, much as it had been to Calvin Coolidge, big government was the enemy of the American way. Reagan's vision was one of individual enterprise and a return to what he called the self-confident spirit of the founding fathers. When he won the election by an electoral landslide, he called it 'the Reagan revolution of 1980'" (294).

"In contrast to the glitzy stars of the roaring twenties, Hoover projected an image of public-spiritedness and morality and, above all, competence. In 1921 he was named President Harding's secretary of commerce, a post to which he was reappointed by Calvin Coolidge. He was soon being described as 'Under-Secretary of everything else, ' as he staked out claims to many aspects of other departments" (284).

"My father...had the strong New England trait of great repugnance at seeing anything wasted...He regarded waste as a moral wrong" (273).

"America, for Jefferson, represented something new in history - a giant leap forward from the old ways of other countries. America was to be built upon enlightened individualism and self-government. It was to be a vast domain of liberty, filled with essentially equal people" (260).

"...Truman was severely criticized for dropping the bomb on Japanese citizens. But to the end of his life, he never doubted his decision. 'The greatest part of the President's job,' he said, 'is to make decisions - big ones and small ones, dozens of them almost every day...The President, whoever he is - has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody'" (251).

"But if Arthur became a creditable president, he also soon found he hated the office. Bored by the endless desk work and by matters of state, he routinely arrived late to the office and procrastinated on duties. He lived for his time off, and for his regular vacations, which he spent fishing or cruising on the presidential yacht" (240, 244).

"In November 1868, General Ulysses S. Grant was elected president, & after four months Johnson returned to Tennessee. 'I have performed my duty to my God, my country, & my family'...Five years later, in an attempt to restore his reputation, Johnson ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate. When the news of his victory in Tennessee reach him - making him the only former president ever to be elected to the Senate..." (234).

"All his life Millard Fillmore had driven himself to succeed. Raised in dire poverty in western New York State, in the most desperate beginnings of any of our Presidents, at fifteen he was apprenticed to a clothmaker. There, while working the carding machines, he taught himself to read" (218).

"When Tyler summoned Harrison's cabinet to meet with him at Brown's hotel, he was told that all administration matters would have to be approved by them...[He said] 'I am very glad to have in my Cabinet such able statesmen as you...But I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall or shall not do...I am the President...When you think otherwise, your resignations will be accepted'" (212).

"Whether manning the tiller or comforting Caroline on deck, Kennedy was always happiest when on the ocean. 'We all came from the sea,' he once said. 'It is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt...that exists in the ocean. And therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the sea'" (203).

"...fifteen major bills were passed shoring up the banking systems, creating a huge public works program, & establishing financial safety nets for farmers & creditors...it was the first time [except Hoover] a president had tried to cure an economic crisis. 'I knew that we must never let our economic system get out of joint again...and the only way...was to have a government with the power to cure the abuses" (187).

"No politician ever made less use of his family heritage than Benjamin Harrison, grandson of President William Henry Harrison. All his life he had a desire to be his own man. 'He will not build high who has not built for himself,' he once told a crowd of his grandfather's admirers" (174).