Michael Beschloss Quotes

As parties began to develop around the turn of the 19th century, you had party nominees for President nominated in caucuses made up of party members in Congress.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.

Legacy is what a president does that affects later generations.

The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.

First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

Then you get to the last half of the 20th century, Americans are getting very skeptical about their leaders and their institutions, and another place that is affected is parties and conventions.

I'm defining [presidential courage] pretty narrowly. It's not only taking a big political risk but it's also the risk that in the hindsight of history, people think it's wise.

Under the system that we now have to nominate presidential candidates, for instance, I would prefer that we have a system that is closer to, say, the one we had in the 1960s.

Roosevelt understands that there are things that are worth surrendering your career for, like defending the country against [Adolf] Hitler.

We [the United States] are the world's only superpower right now, so everyone notices every bit of what we do or don't do.

You don't say that for a senator to be a great senator he has to vote against his constituency.

You have to raise $100 million, probably, to be serious.

You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy.