The early commentators who put down the pre-presidential Roosevelt as an empty-headed young lightweight, all ambition and no talent, now seem comically wrong to a modern book-reading, movie-going, television-watching, legend-loving American public conditioned to think of him as one of the presidential giants on the order of Washington and Lincoln.
Russell BakerThe best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don't do it. I have been out there. It is a mess....
Russell BakerPeople seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
Russell BakerThe dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in the grim hours between midnight and dawn. Hangmen and politicians work best when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.
Russell BakerA man writing a letter is a man in the act of thinking, and it was an exercise Reagan obviously enjoyed. After his first meeting with Gorbachev, for example, he sent a 'Dear Murph' letter about it to his old friend George Murphy, a former senator and actor who had once played Reagan's father in a film.
Russell Baker