The Presidents Club Quotes

“Nixon to Clinton: "When seeking advice from people who are more experienced than you, tell them what you plan to do first, and then ask for their reaction. Don't ask for their advice, and then ignore it. That way you save on bruised feelings.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“If compassion and mercy are not compatible with politics," Ford said, "then something is the matter with politics.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Lydon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Praise of blame in the moment means little: it is how their decisions play out over time that matters, and so the redemption they're looking for is of a more lasting kind. They are one another's peers; who else can really judge them?”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“We want you to succeed," the younger Bush told Obama. "Whether we're Democrat or Republican, we all care deeply about this country...All of us who have served in this office understands that the office transcends the individual.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Eisenhower was the living symbol of what felt in 1969 like an easier age, when greatness was an American birthright, when the torrents of change had not yet crashed into every corner of the culture, when there was a majesty about the presidency that allowed Eisenhower to leave office as beloved, respected, and above all, trusted, as he had been when he assumed it.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Eisenhower's military life taught him that talent was a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. The only way to guarantee smart decisions, Ike believed, was to bring all the responsible parties together and have them fight it out. "I do not believe in bringing them one at a time and therefore being more impressed by the most recent one you hear," he later said. "You must get courageous men, men of strong views and let them debate and argue with each other".”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Lyndon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“You know the great thing about Truman,” he told Goodwin, “is that once he makes up his mind about something—anything, including the A bomb—he never looks back and asks ‘should I have done it? Oh! Should I have done it?’ No, he just knows he made up his mind as best he could and that’s that. There’s no going back. I wish I had some of that quality.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled,” he argued. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again . . . who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“occupying the office Hoover once”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“assassinated just four days before. “It was like”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“If the Presidents Club had a seal, around the ring would be three words: cooperation, competition and consolation. On the one hand, the presidents have powerful motives - personal and patriotic - to help one another succeed and comfort one another when they fail. But at the same time, they compete for history's blessing.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“You know, when a president is about to leave office, most of the time most people are dying for him to go on and get out of there. But there are a few little rituals that have to be observed. One of them is that the president must host the incoming president in the White House, smile as if they love each other and give the American people the idea that democracy is peaceful and honourable and there will be a good transfer of power”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“The phone would ring, and they would put their son on speakerphone. Ever sensitive to charges of puppeteering, Mrs. Bush let it known that certain restrictions were observed. "The rules are: no repeating what he tells you and no giving unsolicited advice and no passing on things that people ask you to give the President...gifts or advice or ideas or wanting job," his mother recalled. "We just have made that deal because we were there. We know what it's like”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“The elder Bush explained later that "watching your son taking a pounding from his critics was much, much harder" than being president. "Barbara quit reading the papers and watching the new, but I couldn't do that”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“It was a stirring piece of bravado but Powell deftly set it aside. "My wife would understand perfectly your loyalty as a general's wife," he said, "but I tell you there is no honour in throwing away lives when the outcome is already determined.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Presidents, even when they get some things right, never cease to be punch lines, and it was telling that Nixon regarded his comic potential as a metric for comparing himself to his successors.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“..., but he gave Clinton a tip: when seeking advice from people who are more experienced than you, Nixon urged, tell them what you plan to do first - and then ask for their reaction. Don't ask for advice and then ignore it. That way, Nixon coached, you save on brusied feelings.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Talbott understood that Nixon's private hospitality and his public obsession with U.S.-Russian relations were part of an elaborate rehabilitation scheme, designed to blur lingering memories of Watergate while serving as a reminder of his own, widely praised foreign policy accomplishments when he was president.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“If the club creates a natural bond among its members, something of that sympathy extends to their families as well. The first ladies share the unique burden of being perhaps the only person left on the planet who can keep the Leader of the Free World grounded, tell him to pull his socks and quit feeling sorry for himself. They know, and their children know, what it means to live in the bell jar; to have family vacations turned into photo ops; to wonder at the sudden surfeit of friends and absence of intimacy.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“By this time the Vietnam War was such a confusing issue to most Americans that Nixon could take as many positions as he liked and find support somewhere for them all. Roughly equal numbers wanted to expand the war as negotiate a peace.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“The club is bound together by an unspoken pledge to protect the presidency; but its members are often driven by an even more fierce desire to protect a legacy”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Eisenhower advocated a variety of strong actions which he had never taken when he was president. Maybe this was just the pattern of former presidents; maybe it reflected how much the circumstances had changed on the ground.”
― Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy, The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity

“Nixon urged Clinton to maintain his relationship with Yeltsin but make contact with other democrats in Russia. He warned Clinton away from some ultranationalists and toward those interested in liberty and reform. He pressed Clinton to replace his ambassador in Kiev and concentrate future U.S. economic aid on Ukraine, where it would matter most.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“If the Presidents Club had a seal, around the ring would be three words: cooperation, competition, and consolation. On the one hand, the presidents have powerful motives—personal and patriotic—to help one another succeed and comfort one another when they fail. But at the same time they all compete for history’s blessing.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“Bill Clinton was lucky in many ways; but when it came to former presidents, he won the lottery. When he was elected president, he had five former commanders in chief at his disposal: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, the most of any president in the twentieth century. Not all of them had been helpful to one another, in or out of office. But some combination of his charm, their needs, and the new global challenges of the post–Cold War age allowed Clinton to deploy nearly all to his advantage—especially, as it turned out, the Republicans.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“In his final remarks to the White House staff, on the day he resigned his office, Nixon applied a version of the lesson to himself. “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“To one degree or another every president is haunted by those who went before, but few so literally as Johnson. No president had ever witnessed the slaying of his predecessor or endured such a brutal transfer of power.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club

“Kennedy may not have cared what Ike had to say. But he knew he at least had to appear to. If nothing else, the image of the two of them consulting would go a long way to reassuring people that the young president was getting the advice he needed.”
― Nancy Gibbs, The Presidents Club