Quotes About Presidency

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.

There has been so much power concentrated. There is no leash on that power anymore and Americans face the situation that this power is getting momentum with each passing year with each presidency.

I'll remember the view out this window [from Oval Cabinet], because this is where we had our - the playground that we put in when Malia and Sasha came in. Being able every once in awhile to look out the window and see your daughters during the summer, swinging on that swing set, that made the presidency a little bit sweeter.

If Hillary Clinton would have left Bill, that would have ended his presidency, not via impeachment but that would have elevated his total lack of character. It would have been the discussion. It would have been the topic point. She shielded all that. There would have been no vast right-wing conspiracy theme that the media did pick up to blame for all that. There wouldn't have been any Hillary and Bill foundation. There wouldn't have been all this fundraising. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have been picked for Obama's whatever if she had run and lost, if everything else had happened.

In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.

The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us. ... His stubbornness, even defiance, in the face of facts ('stupid things,' he once called them in a memorable slip) was nothing short of splendid. ... This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency.

As prime minister, I worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the most important years of all our lives. We talked regularly both before and after his presidency. And I have had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president.

The presidential campaign was oriented toward the way we elect the presidency, Electoral College, not the popular vote. The popular vote doesn't matter. This is not a direct democracy. We have a representative republic, and the popular vote doesn't matter and it never has, by design.

Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground, I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like escaping from the world of the Presidency, I think of him.

In a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can’t otherwise win their fights through elections, can’t win their fights in Congress, can’t win their fights for the Presidency, and can’t win their fights in Courts. For this right-wing minority, hostage-taking is all they have left – a last gasp of those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy.

I am comfortable knowing that I put my heart and soul into the presidency.

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

I meant it when I said she was the greatest first lady ever. Because she viewed the presidency and being first lady as an opportunity to improve people's lives. It wasn't a burden. She put her heart and soul into the experience, just like I did.

It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends, and it's not the glamour of the Presidency, or the wonder of going to receive the Nobel Prize. All those are important, of course. But maybe it's just that I'm 71 years old now. It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends. I would tell them that. Don't forget that. In your brilliance, don't turn your back on your friends. Don't think you're entitled to something, you're smarter than the next guy.

This is the man (Ronald Reagan) who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency

We spend less time with each other now than we did during the presidency. When you're president, you're usually out and back in the same day - at least I was. I just came from a trip to the Middle East last week, where I was gone for five nights, and when I left, Laura [Bush] was out of town.

The first thing that I've got to think about is: What does a Donald Trump presidency mean for the people of my state and for the people of this country? And for the people of the world? I think it would be an absolute disaster. It would be beyond a disaster.

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.

The prospect of Hillary Clinton not winning the presidency opens up a vast dark hole, an unknown, beyond which it is impossible to know what would happen to race relations or anything else we, as a county, want to improve. It has surprised me that Trump has done so well. I used to think the clamor for Trump was simply part of the rightwing backlash against eight years of President Obama. But perhaps it is that and more than that. There is a lot of suspicion, fear, mistrust, anger and hatred out there.

Maybe the Clinton chapter is over now. They've brought enough disgrace to America, the presidency, and the state department. They corrupted the Justice Department.

We live amid falling taboos. In our crowded little hour of history we have seen how the prejudice of religion no longer can bar the way to the White House. Some of you may live to see the day when the prejudice of sex no longer places the Presidency beyond the reach of a greatly gifted American lady. Long before them, I hope you will see a woman member of the Supreme Court of the United States. In Congress and in our State Legislatures we need more women to bring their sensitive experience to the shaping of our decisions.

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.

Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt politician ever to seek the office of the presidency.

When you see how the President makes political or policy decisions, you see who he is. The essence of the Presidency is decision-making.

PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.

Not only can [business conflicts] not be ignored, it needs to be dealt with really front and center before he can conduct [Donald's Trump] presidency.

I believe only foreigners should run for president...Face it, the presidency is a lousy job. And who does lousy jobs we don't want anymore better than foreigners?

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches.

This is our moment of reckoning as a society and as a civilization itself. I didn't need to do this [run for presidency], folks, believe me — believe me. I built a great company and I had a wonderful life. I could have enjoyed the fruits and benefits of years of successful business deals and businesses for myself and my family. Instead of going through this absolute horror show of lies, deceptions, malicious attacks — who would have thought? I'm doing it because this country has given me so much, and I feel so strongly that it's my turn to give back to the country that I love.

I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency.

There's a cancer on the presidency.

after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war ... of dropping Congress from the equation altogether, of super-empowering the presidency with total war-making power and with secret new war-making resources that answer to no one but him, of insulating the public from not only the cost of war but sometimes even the knowledge that it's happened - war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops.

There were tactical decisions that I wish I could have done differently: mission accomplished, not revealing my drunken driving charge prior to my run for the presidency, flying over New Orleans on Katrina and the pictures being released and people saying, "he's aloof and doesn't really care."

What does the Right have to show for eight years of a Republican presidency? I supported George W. Bush in 2000 because I thought he had a conservative bone in his body somewhere. I supported him in 2004 because I thought him the lesser of two evils. At this point, I wouldn't let the fool park his car in my driveway. Bruce Bartlett was right, every damn word.

The US presidency will continue to represent the major power groups of the United States - big business and the military - regardless of who the talking head is.

I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning the presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat would defeat President Nixon. I now think that no one could have defeated him in 1972.

Mitt Romney is predicting that as president, he will create 12 million jobs in his first term. Well, President Obama says a Romney presidency would result in lost jobs. Yeah, his and Biden's.

The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.

Got good news and bad news for you, Mr. President. The good news is that Chief Justice John Roberts just saved your legacy and, perhaps, your presidency by writing for the Supreme Court majority to rule health care reform constitutional.

Aaron Sorkin whole thing was that he didn't want the pomposity of the presidency in the West Wing. But once we cast Martin Sheen and we realised Martin's incredible accessibility, nothing felt pompous or aloof. If the show is about all the planets, let's end it with the sun.

Four times Hillary Clinton has lost the presidency in eight years, a modern American record.

The fact that Trump's refused to divest from his labyrinth of business holdings, the fact that he's continuing to profit from his brand and indeed create all kinds of new opportunities to profit off the presidency is outrageous. The flip side is that he's left out a lot of levers through which to pressure him. You know, the reason you want a president to divest from his business holdings is that foreign governments can try to exert pressure on him by becoming customers of these hotels and inflating the value of how much they're willing to pay for a Trump brand.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

I'm running [ for presidency] because we need to take our country back.

No other President ever enjoyed the Presidency as I did.