Abraham Lincoln spoke out against the Mexican War. But once Americans were under fire, people who were on the fence felt obliged to support it.
H. W. Brands
You might say presidents are drafting the first chapter of their memoirs in these seventh-year State of the Union addresses. They’re trying to get the public and the media to think about their presidencies in the way that they would like to have them thought of.
H. W. Brands
Harry Truman’s decision to fire Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War in April 1951 shocked the American political system and astonished the world. Much of the world didn’t realize the president had the power to fire a five-star general; much of America didn’t realize Truman had the nerve.
H. W. Brands
When the Constitution was written in 1787, there was this supposition that American politics would be above party. The people who would staff the positions in government would have the interests of the country, or at least their states and congressional districts, at heart, and so they wouldn’t form permanent political parties.
H. W. Brands
Once you become president, you don’t even have to stop for red lights. And if it looks like traffic’s too bad, you just take a helicopter.
H. W. Brands
The president of the United States from the 1940s until 2017 was considered the leader of the free world – probably the most powerful person in the world – not simply in terms of America’s military might but in terms of the moral authority of the president. Donald Trump has largely abdicated that.
H. W. Brands
The Founders were anything but demigods to themselves and their contemporaries, who recognized full well that the experiment in self-government had only begun.
H. W. Brands
If you wanted to, you could write history in Haiku.
H. W. Brands
Reagan refused to demonize his foes. Instead he charmed them, with a few exceptions, including Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the embodiment of the liberalism Reagan sought to reverse.
H. W. Brands
To me, the puzzle of Ronald Reagan is how a comparatively ordinary man, someone with not extraordinary talent, accomplished such extraordinary results. At the age of 50, no one expected that this was going to be the guy who would become, at least in my interpretation, one of the two most important presidents of the 20th century.
H. W. Brands
People who teach American history survey classes have a lot of ground to cover and tend to focus on landmarks. You get through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and you have to get to the beginning of the 20th century fast. It’s pretty easy to go lightly on the Gilded Age.
H. W. Brands
Theodore Roosevelt, when he was out of office, he would do things to draw attention. But when you are president, you don’t need to shout. When you are in office, you are the story.
H. W. Brands
I’m often asked, ‘Why didn’t Benjamin Franklin ever become president?’ My short, easy answer is: He died.
H. W. Brands
I never admit to wishing I’d written something by another author, but if my name mysteriously appeared on the title page of ‘The Guns of August,’ I wouldn’t complain.
H. W. Brands
Love makes the most careful man wreckless.
H. W. Brands
When people think of the oil industry, they think of Rockefeller, much like when people think of the software industry, they think of Bill Gates.
H. W. Brands
Americans knock themselves out, especially since 9/11, praising the military.
H. W. Brands
When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together?
H. W. Brands
I read in all forms: paper, computer, phone, audio.
H. W. Brands
The more of my readers I encounter who say, often apologetically, that they are actually listeners, the more I write for the ear rather than the eye. Small things like identifying speakers in dialogue rather than relying on paragraphing to mark the shifts.
H. W. Brands
I’m the farthest thing from a bibliophile. I purge my collection regularly: If I haven’t read a book in a couple of years, I try to give it to someone who will.
H. W. Brands
Even when candidates have degrees from Harvard and Yale, they try to run as the candidate of the common man.
H. W. Brands
You can always find people, ordinary people, who will support your particular view, so it becomes a politics of personality, especially at the presidential level. People often go for somebody that they like or somebody that they can identify with.
H. W. Brands
I certainly don’t think that the heirs of the American Revolution were a particularly noble class.
H. W. Brands
The Reagan Revolution has had no second act.
H. W. Brands
Reagan’s enduring value as a conservative icon stems from his resolute preaching of the conservative gospel, in words that still warm the hearts of the most zealous conservatives. Yet Reagan’s value as a conservative model must begin with recognition of his flexibility in the pursuit of his conservative goals.
H. W. Brands
He used humor more effectively than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Reagan was not an especially warm person, but he appeared to be. Many people disliked his policies, but almost no one disliked him.
H. W. Brands
It wasn’t the smiling Trump that people elected. It was the frowning, glowering, angry Donald Trump that people elected.
H. W. Brands
Toward the end of the 1964 presidential campaign, Reagan gives a speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater. It was like a screen test for a new career.
H. W. Brands
Reagan conspired in the underestimation of his own ability.
H. W. Brands
Most presidents have not considered 100 days a significant milepost.
H. W. Brands
Interest in the Founders has risen and fallen over time, as has admiration for them and their accomplishments.
H. W. Brands
In revering the Founders, we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make improvements – necessary improvements – in the republican experiment they began.
H. W. Brands
Our love for the Founders leads us to abandon, and even to betray, the very principles they fought for.
H. W. Brands
Previous candidates who get elected are almost always sobered by the office and the responsibility they take on. Donald Trump shows no evidence of that. He’s the same Trump that he was when he was host of his reality TV show. He’s the same Trump that he was when he was a candidate.
H. W. Brands
The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.
H. W. Brands
The historic dearth of labor was perhaps the central feature of the American economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
H. W. Brands
The Catalonian movement is quite serious; I don’t think it’s simply symbolic. I think that they believe that Catalonia can be more successful on its own than as part of Spain.
H. W. Brands
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Texas gets a lot more out of being part of the United States than the United States gets out of having Texas as one of the states.
H. W. Brands
A president can start a war under relatively specious circumstances, and once American soldiers are under fire, Americans will support the soldiers and support the president.
H. W. Brands
A lot of people were ambivalent about Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 positioned himself as the peace candidate. Once Johnson sent large amounts of troops into battle in 1965, most Americans were behind the war.
H. W. Brands
If – heaven forbid – a shooter did come into my class, I wouldn’t want to have to worry about getting caught in a crossfire.
H. W. Brands
In the early 19th to the early 20th century, people had a lot of things wrong with them. Doctors didn’t know how to fix them, and so they lived with them.
H. W. Brands
The candidate who promises the most has the best chance of winning.
H. W. Brands
The American political system is based on the president taking the initiative and Congress responding. With President Trump, it’s been the opposite.
H. W. Brands
When a president doesn’t know the policy, it doesn’t make for a very effective leader.
H. W. Brands
It’s hard to say that Trump actually has a health care policy.
H. W. Brands
In the business arena, the standard rules of morality don’t apply. What we’re really looking for is efficiency. It doesn’t do anyone any good to be nice to the weak. In a certain sense, competition is inefficient.
H. W. Brands
On style points alone, Donald Trump makes GWB look magnificently presidential.
H. W. Brands
Although this should not be so, historians reconsider presidencies based on how the presidents conduct themselves after leaving office.
H. W. Brands
George W. Bush has shown himself to be a decent guy, not exploiting his former office to make top dollars giving speeches.
H. W. Brands
President Obama ran a campaign in 2008 that was entirely expected from a non-incumbent. You promise, and you imply that if you elect me, everything good is going to happen.
H. W. Brands