Quotes About Presidency

What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don't go right. Which is to say, often.

Every president learns on the job because nobody`s really prepared for the kind of decisions that cross your desk every day. No one`s prepared for that. No vice president who has scended to the presidency has ever truly been ready for that. Certainly, no vice president who`s assumed the presidency in extremis, like Harry Truman, has been ready for that. But this Trump guy doesn`t seem to be ready for a career in government.

To me, the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency were not prizes to be won, but a duty to be done.

I think the presidency is a bad way to measure the effective campaign finance, because in the presidency, there is so much publicity, there's so much money floating around.

Say what you want to say about the rest of his presidency, including his tone-deaf response to Katrina and a war waged in Iraq on false pretenses, Bush connected with Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 because he looked as frail and unforgiving as we felt.

I think people are exaggerating the fears of a Donald Trump presidency because they're coming off a campaign where they're very disappointed.

You can blame Al Gore and you can blame Ralph Nader and you can blame George Bush, but I blame Bill [Clinton]. I just do. I just think he squandered his presidency the night that woman delivered that pizza to him, and if he hadn't, we wouldn't be where we are and there would be a lot of people who are alive today who aren't.

Trump says that if he's elected, he won't let the presidency interfere with the Miss Universe pageant.

Of course, no religious test for the presidency - every faith adds to our national character.

The judgment that every voter is making of every one of us [running for presidency] who has the experience, who has the vision, who has the judgment to be commander in chief. That is the most important decision for the voters to make. That's a standard I'm held to. And it's a standard everyone else is held to.

I want to just take a moment to thank the Teabaggers. Thank you so much for helping us pass health care, for resurrecting the Obama presidency. I know they're saying, 'Why are you thanking me? I was so against it, I marched on Washington with tea bags hanging off my Founding Fathers costume, with a gun on my hip and a picture of Obama dressed as Hitler, screaming about his birth certificate.' And America saw that and said, 'I think I'll go with the calm black man.'

I think George W. Bush has a warm, engaging personality. But, you know, the presidency is more than just a popularity contest.

The great contest for the presidency is about the future, who can lead, who can get things done.

What this [presidency] campaign is about this bringing millions of people jobs in this country.

Donald Trump may undermine some of the traditional checks on the presidency: the press in particular, but also the various government and Congressional ethics bodies, as well as the career civil service.

Our presidency is a cut above, we all want the president to be the absolutely finest person and best person that we could elect, but even at that, presidents are not supposed to be unapproachable.

Donald Trump entered show business in his early 50s and becomes a celebrity for 15 years. He decides he wants to officially run for president and doesn't really know the inside politics business, and masters it, beats 15 opponents. Then he wins and defeats the Clinton machine... He's a very fast learner. He will figure out the presidency and governing very quickly.

Mahatma Gandhi was a man of peace and non-violence and lived by the Hindu principle of ahimsa, action based on refusal to do harm. As his war-strewn presidency shows, George Bush knows nothing about ahimsa and non-violence. Bush should reconsider this cynical, disrespectful display of symbolism.

I would say of all the things that have happened during the course of my presidency the knowledge that you have hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed, millions who have been displaced, [makes me] ask myself what might I have done differently along the course of the last five, six years.

I think a Donald Trump presidency sets up an Elizabeth Warren ascendancy. And it not Elizabeth Warren, someone of her ilk. And I think that's dreadful.

If we didn't have the Electoral College there would have been no George W. Bush presidency. Algore would have been elected. The Democrats have not gotten over that, and they never will get over the recount, the aftermath of that election in 2000. They are still animated by it today. It is a significant portion of the rage and anger they carry around with them every day, so they want to get rid of it.

I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began with an apology tour. America, he said, had dictated to other nations. No Mr. President, America has freed other nations from dictators.

I think that is also something he [Barack Obama], in the beginning of his presidency, he couldn't really explore and couldn't show. He had to be almost a one-dimensional, stoic leader during that first election.

I'm not going to Wall Street [after the presidency]. The amount of time that I'll be investing in issues is going to be high. But it'll be necessarily in a different capacity.

The media theme was, "June is when you win the presidency," because that's what they thought Hillary [Clinton] was doing. Hillary was running ads condemning [Donald] Trump, characterizing Trump, marginalizing Trump.

Are there any military actions that the president of the United States may not order on his own authority? If so, what are they? Bit by bit, decade by decade, Congress has abdicated its assigned role in authorizing war. Today, it merely rubberstamps what presidents decide to do (or simply stays mum). Who does this deference to an imperial presidency benefit? Have U.S. policies thereby become more prudent, enlightened, and successful?

That's all global warming ever was. For the scientists involved in it, it was a living. You go out and promote what the leftists wanted to hear, and you got grant money. And if you run around and really sound like you believe it, then they're gonna make you a star. And if you're Algore and you realize you can capitalize on your vice presidency, you can become a multimillionaire spreading this hoax, which he has done.

Don't any of you realize there's only one life between that madman and the Presidency?

We can't, you know, use our military to make sure the planet doesn't get warmer. And so that kind of leadership, of being able to bring people together, to apply practical commonsense solutions based on facts, based on science, based on what works you know, that's been the approach I have taken consistently as a public servant. That's the kind of style that I think we need in the presidency right now.

I do not yet know if I will find a Romney presidency more acceptable on foreign policy. But I do know that I must oppose the most recent statements made by Mitt Romney in which he says he, as president, could take us to war unilaterally with Iran, without any approval from Congress.

There has been a cultural shift. It is difficult to measure all that right now, but Chilean women have seen my presidency as a source of pride. Women are performing in jobs in Chile now that 20 or 30 years ago nobody would have dared to imagine.

I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.

Do I think that American democracy ends if Trump is president? No! I think, there are plenty of checks and balances in place. I think he would do some damage to the country but we would recover. The office of the presidency and American democratic institutions are a lot stronger than one person. So if he wins, our job is just to keep the office strong, right? And hope he'll be replaced by something better!

I, more than anything, obviously the presidency is the people, and it's been interesting the emotions in the last few months. What you realize is that you may never have the team that is together in the same way, under the same pressures, and the attachments that you make to folks from your chief of staff down to.

Trump hasn't really done anything yet to abuse his powers. I don't even know if he knows what all his powers are as president. And that worries me. He will learn. After he learns how the presidency works, he could become much more dangerous, because his personality doesn't change. Once presidents find their powers, they don't give them up. They use them.

We cannot be spun, or at least we'd like to think that we cannot be. And the presidents who are trying to - too overtly to try to say, here is what you historians and what you later Americans should think of my presidency, 30 or 40 years later, they look silly.

Forty four percent of Republican voters believe President [Barack] Obama was not born in the United States. They believe he is not a legal citizen of the United States.They believe his presidency is unconstitutional.

Watergate was unique because it allowed the public to play its democratic role in expressing its outrage at the presidency. And as a result, for the first time in history a president resigned.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

The presidency is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people.

Those few days after Kent State were among the darkest of my presidency.

I believe in a free and open press; people have to cover the presidency, respect the office and its current occupant. And we need it to be a two-way street.

Stepping back from running [Donald Trump] positions is meaningless from a conflict of interests perspective. The presidency is a full-time job and he would have had to step back anyway.

Starting in 1994, with the Republican election of Congress, I think [Rush] Limbaugh made a difference in electing the Republican majority. In the following three elections, he made the difference holding the majority. And in 2000, in the presidential race in Florida, he was the difference between Gore and Bush winning Florida, and thus the Presidency.

Any candidate who'd offered a real possibility of an alternative to Nixon - someone with a different concept of the presidency - could have challenged him and come very close to beating him.

Congratulations to Obama! He's now increased the debt more in three years than George W. Bush did his entire eight year presidency. But all that spending was worth it because just look at the great results! So what exactly is the argument that Obama isn't a hugely incompetent failure? So far it's 'Look! Over there! A war on women!'

I also read a lot of nonfiction. I just got "Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein. I felt like what with everything that is going on with the president [Donald trump] and the parallels with [Richard] Nixon's presidency, I needed to know more about the man.

Barack Obama's inspirational whoosh to the presidency in 2008 was unusual. Most campaigns are less exhilarating; indeed, they are downright disappointing - until someone wins.