What if we had a culture that prevented these presidents from being courageous? And I worry now that we have a system that makes it very hard to choose people who would make the same courage choice as our great presidents. And I guess what I would say is, in this next campaign, take a look at the people who are running. If they don't remind you of the great presidents, do not vote for them.

So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.

The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.

I'm defining [presidential courage] pretty narrowly. It's not only taking a big political risk but it's also the risk that in the hindsight of history, people think it's wise.

Legacy is what a president does that affects later generations.

Under the system that we now have to nominate presidential candidates, for instance, I would prefer that we have a system that is closer to, say, the one we had in the 1960s.

The original thing that fascinated me most was why we expect leaders, and especially presidents, at times to destroy themselves - and that's a sign of being a good leader or a good president. We usually don't expect that of almost anyone else in any profession, in particular, in public life.