The President's very shrewd

The press . . . traditionally sides with authority and the establishment.

So when I cover the president, I try to remember two things: First, if you don't ask, you don't find out; and second, the questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.

In 27 years of reporting from Washington, I've never heard a President admit he made a mistake.

I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure.

I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age, but I knew. I read magazines, I listened to radio, I watched television. I knew there was something out there, and I wanted a part of it.

If you have a setback, and you're not doing well and then you overcome it somehow, it always sticks with you. You know it could happen again.