I’ve had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, ‘Your music sucks, you don’t know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don’t know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.’
Dwight D. Eisenhower, in my judgment, will go down in history as one of the four ‘great’ presidents since the U.S. reluctantly became an empire in World War II; Richard Nixon as the nearest to a sociopath by the time he was compelled to resign.
I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided they had no credibility, but we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate.
We’d be in his office playing with trucks as a six-year-old while he’s negotiating deals with presidents of major companies.
Presidents are nice people. They’re nice, fun-loving people who have great jobs.
As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.
I think that presidents don’t give up power that has accrued to them by the precedent of previous presidents. Even when they say they would like to, I think once they get there they don’t give it up.
To give credit to Lincoln for moral progression seems beyond the facts and unnecessary for our appreciation of this arguably greatest of all American presidents.
I think there’s a lot of the hip-hop crowd behind Barack Obama because he’s a black man. Honestly, I’m rooting for Hillary because race is only going to go so far. All the presidents are men at the end of the day.
The economical policies that are instigated really makes you think that the American government is a bunch of evil bastards. So just because you’re black, you’re still representing that government, and when Obama came into office he enacted the same policies that we would critique other presidents for.
Vice presidents are supposed to be eternally loyal, which is why it is so difficult for some to figure out how to succeed their bosses.
It’s certainly true that presidents have confidantes who rise above what you would call just staff.
I think a lot of presidents learn to be president by being president.
Presidents often disappoint, but first ladies rarely do.
As a kid, I was a paperboy, and the walls of the place where we picked up our papers were plastered with pictures of former paperboys – some sports figures, some presidents, some military officers.
The hip hop industry is most likely owned by gays. I happen to think there’s a gay mafia in hip hop. Not rappers – the editorial presidents of magazines, the PDs at radio stations, the people who give you awards at award shows.
Republican presidents talk about freedom. Democratic presidents talk about equality.
I think Ronald Reagan was one of the great presidents, period, not just recently. I thought he had the demeanor. I thought he had the bearing. I thought he had the thought process.
You look around the world in 2013, and you say, ‘How many prime ministers or presidents are in prison?’ One or two. ‘How many generals or bankers?’ Two or three. ‘But how many writers?’ 850 or so.
Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.
Although this should not be so, historians reconsider presidencies based on how the presidents conduct themselves after leaving office.
Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn’t even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty – at least in the first four years of his presidency.
I think you’ll see if you look at ‘Up’, we’ve focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise.
I think that American presidents, that position in itself, as well as American foreign policy, it has terrorism in it. CIA agents going to overthrow certain governments – they’re using terrorist tactics. They’re not going in there like, ‘Hey, you wanna have some cake?’
President Obama has shelled out more in federal spending than the five presidents that came before him.
US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.
Justified or not, the Supreme Court has a kind of sacred status in American life. For whatever reason, Presidents can safely run against Congress, and vice versa, but I think there is an inherent popular aversion to assaults on the court itself. Perhaps it has to do with an instinctive belief that life needs umpires.
I only play projects with weird interpretations of presidents.
For some Republicans, 2016 is 1992: Hating Hillary Clinton is chic again. Only more so, since the former secretary of state is also the partner of and potential successor to the last two Democratic presidents – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity.
The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They’re probably not likely to get it done.
Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child’s life – the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you’ll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
All presidents swear an oath to the Constitution to keep this country united, and when the country fell apart, Lincoln had to put it back together again, with a lot of help. But he bore total responsibility.
Presidents always want to do nice, noble, long-run things, and Congress is less keen to do so. We’ve seen that throughout the history of this country.
Presidents are only seen on August 15 and January 26. Who knows what they do for five years other than this?
In the sweep of history, George W. Bush will be seen as one of our greatest presidents because of the decisions he made to keep us safe after 9/11.
When Presidents Trump, Putin and Erdogan are mentioned in the same breath here in Germany, as they are all too often, this is a false equivalence that cannot be tolerated.
In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government.
During my seven-year contract with RKO, there were seven different studio presidents, from David O. Selznick to Charles W. Koerner. You literally had to check the name on the door so as not to call the new boss by the former boss’s name.
When the going gets tough in Washington, presidents appoint ‘blue ribbon’ commissions.
For too long, I equated leadership with a position. I thought leaders were presidents or politicians or celebrities or four-star generals with a horse and sword.
From John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, presidents have rhetorically opened the door to the frontier for us, and each time, we have turned away to fight over destinations, technologies, and timing.
As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership.
Presidents tend to tinker, you know, and mess everything up.
I’ve done it 30 years. I don’t know what there is to gain by doing it 40. But I think there is something about doing it over that length of time that says something. That’s seven U.S. presidents and five presidents of McDonald’s.
Most presidents have not considered 100 days a significant milepost.
As a media consultant to Republican presidents, Ailes proved a deft manipulator of racial fear. But it was in building Fox News that he found his calling.
Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it’s the job of intelligence to adjust.
A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
Remember, it is not about voting for the perfect candidate – there is no such thing. Presidents are human.
The location of Trump Tower in the heart of America’s largest city requires more complex security arrangements than have been needed for past presidents.
Presidents have a right to certain prerogatives, including the expectation of a certain deference. He’s the president; this is history. But we seem to have come a long way since Ronald Reagan was regularly barked at by Sam Donaldson, almost literally, and the president shrugged it off.
American presidents get to make lots of choices, with one critical exception: what awaits them in the in-box on top of the desk in the Oval Office.
