Quotes About Presidency

This is a column collection, or as one colleague called it, "history in real time," recounting my perspective on the highs and lows of this presidency from an African-American perspective. More than simply a column collection, the book has a substantial introduction that frames the [Barack] Obama presidency, explores the way Obama was treated by the political establishment and also how this first black president treated "his" people. In the epilogue, I use numbers to tell the story of African-American gains and losses during this presidency.

The anti-slavery parties were also called spoilers, including the Republican party that went on not just to abolish slavery but they actually take over the Presidency moving very quickly from third-party into the Presidency.

The presidency has even become a partisan thing. The presidency has been totally politicized and totally made partisan, as evidenced by the IRS going after the Tea Party and any number of other examples I give you.

Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency. To cover up her corrupt dealings, Hillary illegally stashed her State Department emails on a private server. Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments. Then there were the 33,000 emails she deleted. While we may not know what's in those deleted emails, our enemies probably know every single one of them. So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be the president of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency.

I acknowledged that I owed my presidency to People Power. I resolved during my presidency that I would in turn empower the people.

It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.

I am happy and proud that during one year of presidency, my initiatives have been strongly supported by the people and society and we have launched the process of vitally important state reforms.

Sarah Palin may have chosen to not answer the call for the presidency, but make no mistake, the principles that garnered her the unique support she enjoyed continue to inform and drive the base that lifted her.

If any of you are secret poets, the best way to break into print is to run for the presidency.

I think the global markets will probably be selling off with a [Donald] Trump presidency because he has promised to re-do trade deals.

We have entered the era of the 'imperial' former presidency with lavish libraries, special staffs and benefits, around-the-clock Secret Service protection for life and other badges of privilege.

There's no doubt that the Donald Trump administration, part of the red meat that he ran on from the first day when he announced his candidacy was a very extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric that he kept up through the whole campaign - the wall, deportation, more detention. And I think that that particular piece of red meat, he's going to throw out every once in a while and try to - of all the commitments that he's made, this is the one that is most disturbing, because it's one that he will try to fulfill through his presidency.

The only Trump constant seems to be his unpredictability. America lives in a state of constant turmoil. There were those who thought maybe that would calm down when he became president, but what has happened is that the pressures of the presidency have actually exaggerated those tendencies.

I don't think someone should try to bully and insult their way to the presidency.

When you look at the damage that many of the policies that Donald Trump has proposed can do to our citizens of the US - you can compare him to Major Storms Harvey, Irma, Maria. We're talking about life or death issues and about repealing the Affordable Care Act. There are lives at stake. Something that would affect millions and millions of people. I think it's totally appropriate. Obviously, it's a metaphor. It's not to be taken literally. But I mean that when I talk about the damage and the trauma that has been brought into our lives because of his presidency, that that's very real.

Why would there be any contacts with Russian between the presidential campaign? This is all a distraction, and it's all part of a narrative to delegitimize the election and to question the legitimacy of this presidency. The American people see right through it.

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.

We don't think well of our presidents when they are serving. Even Kennedy, with such a short presidency, was beginning to lose his remarkable appeal to the American people when he was suddenly sainted by death.

I think that we are in a position to continue to make progress, but it's gonna require us to both recognize what the problems are, also recognize the progress we've made. Last point I'd make on this, since we're on criminal justice: During the course of my presidency crime has been the lowest it's been probably since the '60s.

It was during George W. Bush's presidency that Iran mastered the nuclear fuel cycle, that they built covert facilities, that they stocked them with centrifuges, that they were spinning merrily away toward getting a nuclear-weapons program.

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.

It's not by coincidence that a lot of protesters against the new presidency in America and in front of the Trump Tower, even in London... the protesters were 90 percent women. The image of the woman and the problem of the woman still exists. Not exactly in the same terms as 200 hundred years ago, but we still have the problem here.

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.

Hamas' leadership needs new blood. I will continue to serve my people. But the presidency of the Palestinian Autonomous Authority is not a free, sovereign position - it is an office that is confined by the occupation. That's why this position is not interesting for Hamas.

The consequences of President Johnsons campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could hardly have been more catastrophic for the nation, the military, the president, his party, and the presidency itself.

Sixty-five months into Bush's presidency, conservatives feel betrayed The main cause of conservatives' anger with Bush is this: He talked like a conservative to win our votes but never governed like a conservative.

When a republic's most venerable institutions no longer operate as they were intended, it becomes possible for small cabals to usurp power, and, while keeping the forms, corrupt the function of those institutions for their own ends. Looking at things that way, the George W. Bush presidency has been both result and symptom of the decadence of America's constitutional mechanisms.

When you are running for the presidency of the United States, you have to expect that you are going to have attacks by all sides.

There isn't a Democrat in politics alive who does not know what the Obama presidency has meant for the Democrat Party around the country. They've lost 1,500 seats. The Democrats only have five states, ladies and gentlemen, where they control the governorship and the state legislature, only five!

Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.

The four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.

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.

In what might be a motto of those who sought the presidency and lost, Ted Kennedy once said, "Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is."

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

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

If I could get an honest answer, I would ask Trump. "How much money would you want in order to leave the presidency?" Because I think he would have a number, strangely enough. Then we'd know how much to launch the Kickstarter for.

Zeroes are important. A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC, and early humans were using stone tools.

Jimmy Carter, who embraced all manner of schemes to make America a second or third-rate country, came down so squarely in favor of the double nickel [the 55 mph National Speed Limit]...This is the same Jimmy Carter whose limosine with him in it, just a little later in his presidency, was timed at an average of 72 mph for the 21.5 mile trip from Detroit Metro to the Detroit Plaza Hotel. He didn't want to be late for a campaign appearance.

The problem is, there was plenty of trash talk during my presidency. A lot.

Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States.

So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.

There's a cancer on the presidency.

We're getting to the point where we're impinging on democratic institutions in this country and I think, you know, it takes a certain - not a suspension of disbelief - but willingness to go along with other people to get the ship of state going forward. I'm not sure that happens in a [Donald] Trump presidency, frankly.

While I'm critical to the Bush presidency, it's been enormously beneficial for Salon because we're seen as kind of an aggressive watchdog on the Bush White House. Particularly since Florida, our readership hit a whole new level, and we held onto those readers.

Let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we are going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.

I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.

Republican politics have been off-kilter for several years now because a large segment of the conservative base does not look back fondly on the Bush presidency.

I think a Donald Trump presidency raises a new kind of version of conservatism which more closely resembles a kind of Father Coughlin, America first populism and nativism and isolationism, than the confident, modern, cosmopolitan, thoughtful, engaged conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan.