The presidents varied in the degree to which they cited the founders. Some, like JFK, LBJ, [Richard] Nixon, and [Bill] Clinton, cited them somewhat frequently, in the range of 100 to 200 times, though, regrettably, not in a thematic or notably profound or even interesting way. Others, like Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, cited them rarely.
Paul KengorThe 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.
Paul KengorReagan thought that school prayer was important because it was crucial to begin each day reminding students that their inalienable rights came to them from their Creator and not from government bureaucrats.
Paul KengorI 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.
Paul KengorI 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.
Paul Kengor[Barack] Obama isn't pointing to anyone, and certainly doesn't like it when others note (correctly) that his influences were the likes of Saul Alinsky, the Chicagoan and modern founder of community organizing, or Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist and agitator from Chicago who mentored Obama in Hawaii in the latter 1970s, and who Obama warmly acknowledges in his memoirs.
Paul Kengor