[Gerald] Ford and [Jimmy] Carter, in fact, were huge disappointments to me. Think about this: They were the presidents around the time of America's historic bicentennial, and yet rarely quoted the founders.

The American founding is not just about a group of people, a group of men. It is about an ideal: Both a vision and understanding of the very essence of democracy, constitutional government, a representative republic, and the remarkably powerful concept of being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

It is interesting that liberals don't mind a strong faith at all. When it's their guy with a strong faith - whether it's Jimmy Carter or Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman - that's just great. FDR inscribing Bibles and sending them to the troops. God bless him! But when a Republican president cites Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, as George W. Bush did on a famous occasion, then, well, the liberals cry out that [Tomás de] Torquemada is on the loose and warn gravely of the coming Inquisition.

I was disappointed in how [Bill] Clinton, like [Jimmy] Carter, used the founders to argue for huge expansions in federal power, clearly beyond what the founders could have ever conceived.

I was a child or didn't live through those presidents prior to [Ronald] Reagan, and thus didn't realize how little attention they had paid to the founders.

There's the unique case of Ronald Reagan, who cited [founders] some 850 times, and in a way that was absolutely fundamental to understanding Reagan's vision for America.

Speaking of [Ronald] Reagan on the faith of the founders, he was particularly fond of George Washington, who he cited nearly 200 times, and almost twice as much as all the presidents since [John F.]Kennedy combined.