Despite an unqualified understanding that U.S. national security was inextricably bound up with Britain's survival, F.D.R. knew that his reelection in part rested on the hope that he would keep the country out of war.

In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear.

Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy.

During Grover Cleveland's second term, in the 1890s, the White House deceived the public by dismissing allegations that surgeons had removed a cancerous growth from the President's mouth; a vulcanized-rubber prosthesis disguised the absence of much of Cleveland's upper left jaw and part of his palate.

For those of us who cry out for gun control, our fears cannot be eliminated as long as the country remains an armed camp in which the most troubled among us can find ways to appropriate one of the easily available weapons in all our communities.

Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order.

Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union.

McCarthy had ten years in the House of Representatives, only two terms as a senator. What did he pass? Are there any bills or any piece of legislation that he's identified with? Not at all.

Besieged by lawsuits that threatened to engulf almost everyone at the White House, Clinton assistants shunned paper or e-mail records of their daily deliberations. One told me that he would go down the hall to confer with his division chief face to face rather than discuss an issue on the telephone.

I think the most important thing that comes out of the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in early 1942 is a commitment on Roosevelt's part to fight Europe first. To struggle first against Germany and put Japan and the Pacific as a secondary theatre in the conflict. And this is what Churchill was after.

What I find so interesting is, Herbert Hoover in August 1928 said no country in the world was closer to abolishing poverty than the United States. And then, of course, we had the Great Depression.

True, most Americans give lip service to the proposition that even the most exalted among us have their flaws, but we are eager to believe that presidents manage to rise above the limitations that beset the rest of us.

Whatever the long-term legal prospects for same-sex marriage, President Obama's willingness to put the matter front and center in an election year can at least make him a candidate for inclusion in Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.

I think experience is a terribly overrated idea when it comes to thinking about who should become president.

Historians will look back and say, 'Foreign policy in the Ford presidency was very much dominated by Kissinger, with a kind of continuity from the Nixon period.' Ford is not going to be remembered as a really significant foreign policy maker.

The rise of the Tea Party, along with the emergence of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Carl Paladino in New York and Ron Paul in Kentucky, is not the first time in American history that voters have responded to hard economic times by supporting angry, unorthodox Senate and gubernatorial candidates.

Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.

Experience helped Richard Nixon, but it didn't save him, and it certainly wasn't a blanket endorsement. He blundered terribly in dealing with Vietnam.

Historians partial to Kennedy see matters differently from those partial to L.B.J. Vietnam has become a point of contention in defending and criticizing J.F.K.

Congress becomes the public voice of opposition.

There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great.

What makes war interesting for Americans is that we don't fight war on our soil, we don't have direct experience of it, so there's an openness about the meanings we give to it.

If nobody trusts you as president, then you can't get anything done.

A presidential candidate's great desire is to be seen as pragmatic, and they hope their maneuvering and shifting will be seen in pursuit of some higher purpose. It doesn't mean they are utterly insincere.

With television, you can make anyone look larger than life.

Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy.

There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't.

At the end of their first years, there are few people who would have predicted that Truman would be elected in 1948 or that Reagan would get a second term. It's always premature to make some kind of categorical judgment after the first year in office.

How many State of the Union addresses do people remember? They don't resonate that way.

The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate.

Unity is Obama's theme.

I think the public can t accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. They don t want to believe the world is that chaotic. It is.

Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country.

At the start of first terms, presidents invariably have a measure of goodwill.

Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else.

For style and for creating a mood of optimism and hope - Kennedy on that count is as effective as any president the country has had in its history.

There's a certain clubbiness to the idea that you're an ex-president. You're no longer a politician. You're a statesman.

It's always valuable for someone running for president... to have as much bipartisan support as possible.

A president cannot sit on his hands and be seen as passive in the face of ruthless action by a foreign dictator.

President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress.

Presidents need to be critically studied and analyzed.

When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks.

Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson's legislative success on civil rights.

Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president's primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration.

A national government using New Deal programs and the massive defense spending beginning with World War II and continuing through the Cold War was Johnson's vehicle for expanding the Southern economy and making it, as he hoped, one of the more prosperous regions of the country.

The Cold War is over. The kind of authority that the presidents asserted during the Cold War has now been diminished.

Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

Historians evaluating George W. Bush's first term will focus on foreign policy and, most of all, 9/11. I think they will criticize him for his early reaction, for not returning at once to Washington, D.C.

The greatest presidents have been those who demonstrated astute judgment in times of crisis - often despite the advice they were getting.

Herbert Hoover was a man of genuine, fine character, but he lacked practical political sense. And he couldn't bend and shift and change with the requirements of the time. And he was a ruined President, because he was such a, I think, stiff-backed ideologue. And I think that speaks volumes about his character.