Dead Presidents

11.22.63, Part 3: Nightmare On Elm Street (12:30 PM)

anthonybergen:

(Read Part 2)

What can you do in 4.6 seconds?  It takes twice that amount of time for the fastest human being who has ever lived to run 100 meters at top speed.  Some people take longer than 4.6 seconds to process thoughts, to start sentences, to absorb facts and make conclusions.  Some people only need 4.6 seconds to leave an indelible imprint upon history, to make a wife a widow and children fatherless.  For some people, 4.6 seconds is all the time required to change the world. 

The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM.  President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade has passed the building and is on Elm Street, in the open air of Dallas’s Dealey Plaza, en route to the Trade Mart, just five minutes away.

On Elm Street, Jackie Kennedy sees another overpass that will provide a brief, shady respite from the glare of the bright Texas sun.  Those quick seconds of a cool shield from the unseasonably warm November day have been welcome interruptions from the waving and smiling that she has been greeting crowds with since the President and the First Lady arrived at Love Field just a few minutes earlier.  As Presidential aide Kenneth O’Donnell had reminded her to do, Jackie is looking at the crowd on her left while President Kennedy looks to his right.  Directly, in front of the President is Texas Governor John Connally, pleasantly surprised at the friendly Dallas welcome the President is receiving.  Next to the Governor is his wife, Nellie, who just finished joking to the President that it would be impossible for people to say that Dallas didn’t love him.  Driving the President’s Lincoln limousine at 11.2 miles per hour, Secret Service agent Bill Greer just navigated a sharp turn below the Book Depository building while agent Roy Kellerman scans the crowd from his front passenger seat.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

On Elm Street, a large crowd has gathered on the grassy expanse in Dealey Plaza, as well as along the sidewalks, hoping to catch a wave or a smile from their popular President before he disappears underneath the triple railroad overpass that Jackie anticipates while give her a momentary break from the sun.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

On Elm Street, Secret Service agents in follow-up cars search the large crowds for unnatural movements, suspicious characters, and anything which might interfere with or cause harm to the Presidential motorcade or the President himself.  The car behind the President, code named Halfback, also carries the President’s close aides, O’Donnell and Dave Powers.  They watch the President intently, studying his interaction with the crowd, soaking up what is working and what is not working on this almost purely political trip into suspected hostile territory for JFK.  Up until now, they too have been surprised by Dallas’s warm welcome.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM.   

On Elm Street, the car behind Halfback carries Vice President Lyndon Johnson, his wife Lady Bird, Senator Ralph Yarborough, and several Secret Service agents.  This is his home state, but Lyndon Johnson is just along for the ride.  He’s not happy with his role as Vice President.  He’s not thrilled to be riding with Senator Yarborough, who he has been feuding with for several years, and he’d rather be home at his LBJ Ranch or running the country that JFK is in charge of.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

Above Elm Street, 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald sits in a sixth-floor window of his place of employment — the Book Depository building — watching, waiting, and ready.  Oswald has an Italian-made, 6.5 x 52 mm Carcano rifle which he purchased by mail order eight months earlier.  Inside of the rifle is a round-nosed bullet with a copper jacket.  With this rifle and this bullet, Oswald is going to change the world.  Before the clock on the Hertz sign a couple of floors above him ticks off another minute, Lee Harvey Oswald will change the world with something that weighs just 10 grams.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

The loud crack that everyone hears at exactly 12:30 PM is difficult to figure out, even for the highly-trained Secret Service agents guarding the life of the President.  Most think that it is a motorcycle backfiring, perhaps even a firecracker.  The First Lady would later say that was what she thought.  Only one of those highly-trained Secret Service agents reacts immediately.  He is Rufus Youngblood and the instant he hears the crack of Oswald’s gun, he leaps into the backseat of his car and shoves the 6’3” Vice President as far down into the limo as possible, screaming “Get down!” while covering him with his body.  Later, Youngblood notes that he briefly worried that he he might be overreacting.  He wasn’t.

One person does realize that the sound he heard isn’t a motorcycle backfiring or a firecracker exploding.  Governor Connally is an avid hunter and he realizes that someone just fired a rifle.  The Governor — relieved that the Dallas trip was going better than expected to this point — also realizes that the perfect trip just turned into an attempted assassination.  Immediately after hearing the first shot, Connally begins saying, “Oh, no, no, no!”.  In the 2.3 seconds after the first shot is fired, people are still trying to figure out what just happened.  The clock on the Hertz sign still reads 12:30 PM when a second shot is fired.

Still looking to her left, Jackie Kennedy shifts to the right when she hears the Governor’s words.  The President is smiling at a young boy and beginning to wave when Oswald’s second shot tears through the back of the President’s neck just to the right of his spine.  The bullet causes damage to Kennedy’s right lung, shreds his trachea and exits through the front of his throat, slicing through his tie.  The bullet doesn’t stop there.  Governor Connally had jerked quickly to his right upon hearing the first gunshot.  The same bullet that passed through the President rips into Connally’s back, exits his chest, re-enters his body at his right wrist and plunges through to his left thigh.  Greer, the driver, looks back over his right shoulder.  Kellerman, the passenger, looks over his left.  Inexplicably, they don’t react.  Agent Clint Hill, on a running board of Halfback, does.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

The President is hurt, but his wound is not mortal.  In fact, Governor Connally is injured far more severely from the shooting.  Blood is pouring out of his chest, but a delayed reaction means he doesn’t feel pain for a second or two after being hit.  When the pain hits, it is excruciating and Connally moans, “They are going to kill us both!” as his wife grabs him and pulls him towards her.  Jackie now realizes that something is terribly wrong because the Governor of Texas is screaming with fright and pain.  She looks to her husband and he has a look on his face that reminds her of when he’d get a headache or was in the middle of a deep thought.  Later, she would describe his look as “quizzical”.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

President Kennedy jerks into an odd position as he is hit.  He grasps at his throat, his hands clenched in fists and his elbows higher than his shoulders.  This movement — exceedingly unnatural-looking — finally elicits a response from the Secret Service.  While Greer unsconsciously slows the Presidential limousine down and Kellerman freezes, Clint Hill has bounded off of Halfback and is running towards the back of the President’s car.  Several Secret Service agents reach for their guns, still unsure of what happened, but positive that something has gone wrong.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

The President slumps slightly towards his wife, as if he is choking and needs assistance.  Jackie leans towards the President.  With her white-gloved hands, she gently grabs JFK’s left elbow and begins pulling him towards her.  It has been less than five seconds since the first shot was fired, but it is now clear that the glare of the Texas sun is the least of Jackie Kennedy’s worries.  She glances briefly towards the front of the limo at Governor Connally, whose lap is drenched with blood; at Nellie Connally who is pulling her husband into her lap; at Bill Greer, who actually slowed the limo down in his confusion; and at Roy Kellerman, who is looking back at the President, yet still sitting in his passenger seat.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

As the President leans towards his wife and the First Lady leans towards her husband, it appears as if Jackie is looking now at the area of the throat that Kennedy is clutching.  Their faces are just inches apart from each other.  Jackie is no longer looking to her left.  There are no more waves, no more smiles.  Kellerman remembers hearing the President say, “My God, I’m hit”, but no one else in the limo remembers that.  In fact, it was probably impossible for the President to speak after the bullet tore through his throat.  The clock on the Hertz sign above the Texas School Book Depository building reads 12:30 PM. 

On Elm Street, the glamorous First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, is wearing a bright pink dress and spotless white gloves and has a bouquet of fresh red roses in her lap while the dark blue Presidential limousine passes a crowd of diverse colors gathered in a plaza full of green grass as a third shot rings out.  The clock on the Hertz sign on top of the ugly, brown Book Depository building still reads 12:30 PM.

If there was any doubt about what was happening as the first two shots were fired, the doubt disappears in a thick mist of blood, bone and brain matter when the third shot hits its mark.  Motorcycle cops escorting the President’s limousine are sprayed first by the sickening result of Lee Harvey Oswald’s third shot.  One likened it later to being hit with “wet sawdust”.  Before the third shot, there is no blood other than that pumping out of John Connally’s wounds.  John F. Kennedy has been wounded, but he is not bleeding noticeably.  Yet, as Jackie leans into her husband everything turns red — the limousine, Jackie’s fashionable dress, the Connally’s, Greer, Kellerman, the naturally red roses, the windscreens on motorcycles near the limo, and the faces of Secret Service agents inside Halfback.

By the third shot, Secret Service agents have turned their attention to the the Presidential limousine and many are watching President Kennedy’s head when the final shot hits.  Later, people remembered the sound just as distinctly as the sight.  One agent recalled the dull sound as being similar to the noise of a watermelon being smashed or a bullet being shot into a jug of water.  Almost all of the agents watching the President immediately know that the wound is fatal.  Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers, two of Kennedy’s closest friends as well as longtime aides, begin praying.  Clint Hill is almost to the back bumper of JFK’s car when the third shot hits and covers him in blood and flesh.

The fatal shot strikes President Kennedy in the back of the head, almost directly in between the ears.  The entrance wound is small, but the bullet violently exits the right side of the front of his head, exploding into a cloud of blood, pieces of his cerebellum, skull fragments, and flesh with hair still attached.  The President’s body jerks suddenly to the front and then to the back, awkwardly slamming into the seat and falling into the lap of Jackie.  Blood is everywhere.  Thick clumps of blood which immediately cover the limousine.  Jackie screams, “My God, what are they doing?  My God, they’ve killed Jack!  They’ve killed my husband.  Jack!  Jack!  I love you, Jack!”.  Jackie is cradling her husband’s disfigured head in her lap as blood stains her pink suit and white gloves.  The brain of her husband — a brain admired by so many for it’s ability and intellectual curiosity — is leaking out of his head along with bright red blood which is as thick as mud. 

Suddenly, Jackie jumps up and climbs towards the trunk of the limousine.  She is later asked about this action and doesn’t remember why she did it.  In fact, she has no recollection of doing it at all, even when looking at photographs of herself doing it.  Clint Hill has caught up to the hand grips on the back of the Lincoln as Kellerman finally acts and orders Greer to accelerate.  Hill nearly loses his grip and is also unsure later why Jackie was climbing out of the backseat.  To some it looks like she is trying to escape the horror, to others it appears as if she is trying to help pull Hill on to the limo.  To a lot of people, it’s thought that she was retrieving pieces of her husband’s shattered skull.  Despite Greer’s acceleration, Hill jumps on to the limo, grabs Jackie, puts her back into the seat, and lays spread-eagle above the mortally-wounded President.  The site inside the limo sickens him.  A flap of Kennedy’s skull is hanging to his head only by a thin thread of flesh.  There is blood everywhere.  Pieces of detached skull fragments with Kennedy’s hair still attached lie in the backseat.

Hill knows that the President’s wound is not survivable.  As he shields the dying President and the shocked First Lady, he slams his hand against the car’s exterior, realizing that the Secret Service just failed to do it’s most important job.  Nellie Connally cradles her husband in her arm’s as well.  Not all of the blood is Kennedy’s.  Governor Connally is bleeding profusely.  He is also losing consciousness.  Indeed, Nellie Connally believes her husband is actually dead until his hands move slightly.  Jackie Kennedy is repeating over-and-over again, “They’ve killed him!  I love you, Jack!”.

The President of the United States is still breathing, but barely.  His eyes are open, staring blankly at Jackie as she tries to shield him from the horror that has already befallen her, her family, and her country.  Kellerman orders the limousine to head to Parkland Hospital and the Greer slams the gas pedal to the floor, heading out of Dealey Plaza and underneath the triple overpass that Jackie was looking forward to.  The people in the plaza are stunned.  Most don’t even realize what has happened.  Those who do are convinced that Kennedy is dead. 

Before lapsing into unconsciousness from his wound, Governor Connally hears Jackie Kennedy’s tears.  He hears his wife screaming.  He hears static on the police and Secret Service radios as they frantically, belatedly take action.  He hears orders being given, engines being revved, and his own heart pumping blood just as quickly as it pours out of his body. 

What he doesn’t hear are frightened pigeons flying up and away from the Book Depository building.  What he didn’t hear was empty shell casings popping out of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle and landing on the floor of his sixth-floor perch.  What he doesn’t hear are the labored breaths and gurgling sounds coming from the President’s wounded throat.  What he doesn’t hear are the preparations being made to receive a Code 3 emergency at Parkland Hospital involving the President of the United States.

What Governor Connally most remembers hearing as he drifts into unconsciousness is Jacqueline Kennedy — elegant, beautiful Jacqueline Kennedy — sobbing and saying over-and-over again, “What have they done to you?  I love you, Jack!”.  And, finally — tragically, heartbreakingly, horrifically — he hears the First Lady softly tell Clint Hill, “I have his brains in my hand.” 

In less than five seconds, Lee Harvey Oswald changed the course of history in the most dramatic, violent, brutal, and sickening way — and he made it look easy.  As the President’s limo sped towards Parkland Hospital, someone who looked towards the building that the shots came from would have noticed the pigeons flying upwards and away from the building.  And as those pigeons rose into the bright blue Texas sky of November 22, 1963, someone who looked towards the building that the shots came from also might have noticed a clock on the Hertz sign on top of the building’s roof. 

If they noticed that clock on that sign, they would have seen that the time was now 12:31 PM.

11.22.63, Part II: Everything Changes

(Read Part I)

After greeting the crowd at Love Field that came out to welcome them to Dallas, President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, climbed into a highly-customized, dark bluish-black Lincoln Continental limousine code-named SS-100-X by the United States Secret Service.  The driver is 54-year-old Bill Greer, born in Ireland, and the oldest man on JFK’s Secret Service detail.  Next to Greer is Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, the designated agent in charge of the President’s trip to Texas.  SS-100-X is built specifically for Presidential use, heavily armored and fitted with running boards for Secret Service agents to stand on, as well as hand grips on the trunk that agents can hold on to as they ride on the vehicle.  A United States Air Force C-130 accompanies Air Force One on its stops, hauling vehicles and equipment such as the Presidential limousine, from city-to-city.  It is not easy to do this, nor is it cheap, but it is necessary.  The protection of the President requires complete control by the Secret Service when it comes to the planning and execution of Presidential trips. 

The President does control some aspects, however.  This trip to Texas is a political trip.  This is the unofficial kick-off of the 1964 campaign, and Texas is a must-win state — probably the most important state in the nation to JFK’s re-election chances.  The President has the ability to electronically raise his seat and footrests by as much as eight inches, in order to give the crowd a better chance of seeing him.  The President also can make the call about whether or not the limousine should be open or covered.  In Dallas, the weather was perfect.  The President would go without the clear, plastic bubble-top which could normally be used to cover the limo.  A lot of people had turned out in Dallas to see their President; he wanted to be certain that he could be seen.  For that reason, as well, there would be no agents on the running boards of Kennedy’s limousine as it slowly drove through the streets of Dallas.

Besides Greer, Kellerman, the President, and the First Lady, the limousine also carries the Governor of Texas, John Connally, and his wife, Nellie.  Connally is a protege of the Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, who is sitting two cars behind the Presidential limo.  Connally is young, ambitious, popular, and rising quickly in the world of politics.  Many observers believe that Connally could become the first Texan to become President.  In less than an hour, they would already be incorrect.

Eight motorcyle escorts and a lead car with Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry at the wheel pilot the Presidential motorcade, with the District of Columbia license plate “GG 300”, out of Love Field and towards the Trade Mart, site of President Kennedy’s lunchtime speech.  Following the President’s limousine is a convertible code-named “Halfback” containing Secret Service agents inside the vehicle and on the running boards, as well as Presidential aides Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers, devoutly loyal, close friends of the President who help form his “Irish mafia”.  Halfback is followed by Vice President Johnson’s limousine, also containing Senator Ralph Yarborough and more Secret Service agents, including Johnson’s lead agent, Rufus Youngblood.  Another Secret Service follow-up car is behind LBJ’s limo, followed closely by press vehicles, photographers, cars full of Congressmen, local politicians, White House aides, military aides, and others.

As the motorcade makes its way towards the Trade Mart, it is sunny and bright and Jackie Kennedy wants to wear her sunglasses.  After leaving Love Field, the caravan travels along lightly-populated roads with very few spectators.  Governor Connally wasn’t expecting anyone to view the motorcade until it reached downtown, but here-and-there are a few people catching a glance at the President’s limo heading towards downtown Dallas.  Inside the car, President Kennedy vetoes Jackie’s attempt to put on her sunglasses.  The people want to see her eyes, want to see her smile, and this is a political trip — you have to give the people what they want.  So, Jackie does.  But she welcomes every overpass that the motorcade travels under because it provides a brief respite of shade and whenever the crowds momentarily thin during the drive, she slips her sunglasses on quickly to shield her eyes from the glare.  Presidential aide Ken O’Donnell had reminded Jackie prior to the motorcade’s departure that she should do her best to look to the left side and greet those people who were on the opposite side of the street from the President that were prevented from getting a good view of JFK.  Help temper their disappointment by allowing them to see you, Jackie.  A lot of the time, she forgot that people enjoyed seeing her, too.  She had a habit of looking at the President, watching the President greet the crowds.  She admired his ability to turn on that switch and release that charisma that attracted her to him in the first place.  For the most part, she did just as requested.  For the most part, she wasn’t looking at the President.  For the most part.

For weeks, fears gripped the Presidential advance team planning the Texas trip because of anti-Kennedy tension in many Texas cities, particularly Dallas.  With the motorcade greeting happy, smiling, excited crowds, Governor Connally relaxes a bit.  He was worried that this trip through Dallas would not be an easy one.  Dallas is the most conservative city in Texas, and for the past few days, leaflets attacking the President have circulated amongst every level of Dallas society.  Governor Connally thought that this would be an ugly trip through an unimpressed citizenry.  President Kennedy wasn’t much more confident about Dallas than the Governor.  Yet, as they inched closer downtown, Connally is relieved and the President appears to be genuinely enjoying himself.

In the follow-up car behind the President’s limousine, the Secret Service is scanning the crowds which are gaining in size as the motorcade gets closer to the Trade Mart.  In that same car, Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers also scan the crowd.  Probably more worried about a hostile crowd than the President, these two aides are satisfied.  O’Donnell is pleased that the First Lady remembered his suggestion and is facing the people on her side of the limo.  Over the noise of the cheering crowd, O’Donnell tells Powers, “There’s certainly nothing wrong with this crowd.”

The motorcade is heading towards Dealey Plaza — “Dallas’s Front Door” — where the biggest crowd is gathered to see the President pass on his way to give his speech.  It’s 65 degrees and the motorcade makes a turn onto Houston Street from Main Street.  The crowds are now thick in numbers and bursting with anticipation.  Cheers are drowning out the noise of motorcycles and big cars.  The trip down Houston is short and leads the motorcade into a sharp turn on to Elm Street — almost a U-turn and fairly difficult for the long, awkward limousine to handle.  From Main to Elm, less than one minute ticks off the clock.  They are just five minutes away from the Trade Mart and this trip has been a pleasant surprise — astonishingly positive despite Dallas’s reputation as being virulently anti-Kennedy.

As they are navigating that sharp turn on to Elm Street, Governor Connally’s wife, Nelly, turns to the President and smiles.  “Mr. President, they sure can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, can they?”.  Smiling back, the President responds “No, they sure can’t.”

A non-descript building called the Texas School Book Depository stands guard over the sharp turn where the motorcade merges on to Elm Street.  At the top of the seven-story brick building, a large Hertz sign displays the time to Dealey Plaza.  For hours, anxious Texans have been glimpsing at the clock from the positions they staked out in Dealey Plaza, waiting for their glimpse of the President of the United States.  There are people with their children, pointing out the motorcycle escorts that signal that the President’s arrival is imminent.  There are white people and black people, old people and young people, men and women, standing on grassy areas of the plaza or along Elm Street’s sidewalk, waiting and watching.  There is a man named Abraham Zapruder, a local dressmaker, who is excitedly waiting to use his new Bell & Howell 8mm video camera to film a few seconds of the President’s visit to Dallas.  In the buildings surrounding Dealey Plaza, there are workers who have interrupted what they are doing so they could flock to the windows and watch history pass through their city.

The motorcade is only moving at a speed of 11 miles per hour, but the trip through Dealey Plaza will be measured in seconds, not minutes, so the crowd is ready to catch their quick glimpse.  On the sixth floor of the Book Depository building, an employee has taken a break from work to watch the motorcade.  He is young — the type of person who is likely to have voted for John F. Kennedy if he was actually old enough to vote at all in 1960.  He is also focused, even determined.  Everyone wants to see the President, but this young man can’t miss him.  He won’t miss him.

Just above that young man, the clock on the Hertz sign changes.  It is exactly 12:30 PM in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.  The sky is blue.  The temperature is warm.  Pigeons on top of the Book Depository building seem to be just as interested in the activity below as the young man in the sixth-floor window.  Below him, crowds are cheering wildly.  The President and his beautiful wife are finally passing by, along with the Governor and Mrs. Connally.  There are smiles and waves and cheers.  But when that clock strikes 12:30 PM everything changes. 

It’s inexplicable, but time acts unnaturally in the next few minutes.  The minutes seem long while the seconds seem instant.  At 12:30 PM on Elm Street, however, everything changes.  Some think it’s a motorcycle backfiring, some think it’s a firecracker, but the pigeons on top of the Book Depository building think it’s time to fly away quickly.  A smiling President doesn’t even have time to stop smiling as everything changes.

11.22.63, Part I: Time and Color (Prologue)

The strangest thing about the day was also the most welcome and surprising thing about the day.  It was quiet — no protests, no angry demonstrations as expected — just blue skies, excited crowds, and an unseasonably warm and bright November day in Dallas.  In fact, the most startling aspect was just how colorful the day was — a truly, aesthetically colorful day.  That may be the first thing people noticed — the color.  The color of the majestic Presidential aircraft, Air Force One;  the color of that endlessly blue Texas sky;  the color of the red roses handed to the beautiful First Lady after she walked down the steps of the plane at Love Field;  the color of her pink Chanel dress and signature pillbox hat as she shook hands with the throng of cheering people greeting her and her husband;  the color of the healthy glow on the tanned face of the young, yet secretly unhealthy, President;  the color of the shiny black limousines organized in a motorcade set to transport John F. Kennedy and his party to the Trade Mart in Dallas for a political speech thought to be the kick-off to the President’s 1964 re-election campaign.

Yes, it was the color that most people noticed at first.  It’s the color of that day that people still notice.  In a time where the images we look back upon are frozen in black and white; the color of November 22, 1963 jumps out at us as if it was the day the world was finally painted.  In a way, it was very similar because this was the day that the world changed.  This was the day where America became a jaded adult.  And, even now, the colors still strike us as being from another world.  Beautiful, horrible colors illustrating our history, stirring our souls, and destroying a new frontier as we watched in disbelief and wondered what was happening to our hopes, wondered who was extinguishing our dreams, and wondered what reason there was for dragging us into a cold, modern reality.  

Umberto Eco has written that “time is an eternity that stammers”.  But time is as abstract as it is definitive; as much a matter of opinion or judgment as it is measurement or tool.  For example, doing something for 46 years is long enough to make you experienced; yet dying at 46 years old means you died too soon.  Living for 24 years is barely an instance in comparison to a long, full life; yet 24 years of bitterness and anger and misguided actions is equal to torture.  However, you can change the world just as much at 24 as at 46, and it only takes a fraction of a second.  In Dallas that day, in a collection of nightmarish seconds bracketed within several sudden minutes, a 24-year-old man who had never accomplished anything changed not only a nation’s leadership, but it’s attitude, by killing a 46-year-old man who had accomplished more than anyone else ever had at that young of an age.

John F. Kennedy had given power to youth.  The first President born in the 20th Century; the torch-bearing, charismatic leader of a new generation of Americans; the first President who Americans didn’t view as one of history’s statues but, instead, as an agent of progress.  Youth put JFK in the White House.  Youth drove JFK’s message and his administration.  The United States — a young country — was being led by a young President who energized young Americans, kicked down old walls, and set the nation sailing towards a new era. 

John F. Kennedy gave power to youth, youth gave power to JFK, and on November 22, 1963, a young man killed the young President in front of his young wife and a young, ever-changing country — a country that would never be as young again.

This series, “11.22.63” will detail that time — those short, hectic minutes which seemed to last forever — where a new beginning was brought to an abrupt and violent end.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: The Nightmare On Elm Street (12:30-12:32 PM)

Presidents Talk About Presidents (Overview)

Yes, it is a big collection of quotes.  A very big collection.  I tried to break it up into three parts, but it’s still long.  I just wanted to get them up on the site because I find them very interesting.

This is going to be a work-in-progress.  Basically, I’m trying to collect quotes by Presidents about the Presidents.  There are some really fascinating viewpoints on the Presidents by other members of their exclusive “Fraternity”.  Some positive, some negative, and a lot of very surprising and blunt comments (SEE: NIXON, RICHARD).

Anyway, if you find some that you like and I am missing, please feel free to e-mail me at bergen.anthony@gmail.com and I will add them to the collection.

Presidents Talk About Presidents

(WASHINGTON-LINCOLN)

WASHINGTON
“A gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents and excellent universal character would command the approbation of all America and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the union.”  —- John Adams, 1775

“He is too illiterate, unread, unlearned for his station and reputation.”  —- John Adams

“I have seen him in the days of adversity, in some of the scenes of his deepest distress, and most trying perplexities.  I have also attended him in his highest elevation, and most prosperous felicity, with uniform admiration of his wisdom, moderation, and constancy.”  —- John Adams

“An Anglican monarchical, and aristocratical party has sprung up, whose avowed object is to draw over us the substance, as they have already done the forms, of the British government…It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England.” —- Thomas Jefferson, 1796

“He errs as other men do, but he errs with integrity…His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order…and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder.  It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention, but sure in conclusion…He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern.  Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed…His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision.  He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.” —- Thomas Jefferson

“The only man in the United States who possessed the confidence of the whole.”  —- Thomas Jefferson

“There isn’t any question about Washington’s greatness.  If his administration had been a failure, there would have been no United States.  A lesser man couldn’t have done it…Washington was both a great administrator and a great leader, a truly great man in every way.”  —- Harry Truman

“Well, his monument is still there.” —- Calvin Coolidge commenting on a book which portrayed Washington in a negative light.

“The mightiest name on Earth.  On that name an eulogy is expected.  Let none attempt it.  In solemn awe pronounce the name and in its naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on.”  —- Abraham Lincoln

“A gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent…sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country.”  —- John Quincy Adams

“Insane.” —- James Monroe after Washington recalled him from duty.

J. ADAMS
“He is distrustful, obstinate, excessively vain, and takes no counsel from anyone…He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probably effect of the motives which govern men.  This is all the ill that can possibly be said of him:  he is profound in his view and accurate in his judgment except when knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment…I like everything about Adams except his politics…I never felt a dimunition of confidence in his integrity, and retained a solid affection for him.”  —- Thomas Jefferson

“Mr. Adams and his Federalists wish to sap the Republic by fraud, destroy it by force, and elect an English monarchy in its place.”  —- Thomas Jefferson

“It’s just that he wasn’t very special.” —- Harry Truman

“All I want them to say about me is what they said about John Adams:  ‘He kept the peace’.” —- John F. Kennedy

JEFFERSON
“He is an old friend with whom I have often had occasion to labor on many a knotty problem, and in whose abilities and steadiness I always found great cause to confide.”  —- John Adams, 1784

“It is with much reluctance that I am obliged to look upon him as a man whose mind if warped by prejudice and so blinded by ignorance as to be unfit for the office he holds.  However wise and scientific as philosopher, as a politician he is a child and a dupe of party.”  —- John Adams, 1797

“Thomas Jefferson still survives!” —- John Adams, his last words before dying July 4, 1826; Adams didn’t know that Jefferson had died earlier that same day.

“For a period of fifty years, there has not been an interruption or a diminution of mutual confidence and cordial friendship (between myself and Mr. Jefferson) for a single moment in a single instance…In may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a “walking library”, and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that a Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him…He lives and will live in the memory and gratitude of the wise and good, as a luminary of Science, as a votary of liberty, as a model of patriotism, and as a benefactor of human kind.”  —- James Madison, 1826

“A slur upon the moral government of the world.” —- John Quincy Adams

“One of my favorite quotations about age comes from Thomas Jefferson.  He said that we should never judge a President by his age, only by his work.  And ever since he told me that, I’ve stopped worrying.  And just to show you how youthful I am, I intend to campaign in all 13 states.” —- Ronald Reagan, 1980

“An idealist with sense.”  —- Richard Nixon

“The next great President, in my view, was Jefferson…Jefferson was just as important (as Washington and Lincoln) because he was working continuously for the preservation of free government as established by the Constitution.”  —- Harry Truman

“Perhaps the most incapable Executive that ever filled the Presidential chair…It would be difficult to imagine a man less fit to guide the state with honor and safety through the stormy times that marked the opening of the present century.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt

“The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of a free society.”  —- Abraham Lincoln

“He was a mixture of profound and sagacious observation, with strong prejudices and irritated passions…If not an absolute athiest, he had no belief in a future existence.  All his ideas of obligation were bounded by the present life.  His duties to his neighbor were under no stronger guarantee than the laws of the land and the opinions of the world.  The tendency of this condition upon a mind of great compass is to produce insincerity and duplicity, which were his besetting sins through life.”  —- John Quincy Adams

“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”  —- John F. Kennedy, April 29, 1962, White House dinner for Nobel Laureates.

“I want to be faithful to Jefferson’s idea that about once in a generation you have to shake things up and face your problems.  We owe it to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and all our forbears to face the difficult problems of our time and try to solve them.”  —- Bill Clinton, Monticello, Virginia, 1993

“If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, I would appoint him Secretary of State, and then suggest to Senator Gore that we both resign so he could become President.”  —- Bill Clinton, Monticello, Virginia, 1993

MADISON
“(My) pillar of support through life…I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism; nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.”  —- Thomas Jefferson, 1812

“Despite his unimpressive appearance and manner, he was a brilliant fellow with a crystal-clear mind…It was just that, when it came time for him to act like an executive, he was like a great many other people; when the time comes to make decisions, they have difficulty doing it.”  —- Harry Truman

MONROE
“He is a man whose soul might be turned wrong side outwards without discovering a blemish to the world.”  —- Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“There behold him for a term of eight years, strengthening his country for defense by a system of combined fortifications, military and naval, sustaining her rights, her dignity and honor abroad; soothing her dissension, and conciliating her acerbities at home; controlling by a firm though peaceful policy the hostile spirit of the European Alliance against Republican South America exrtorting by the mild compulsion of reason, the shores of the Pacific from the stipulated acknowledgment of Spain; and leading back the imperial autocrat of the North, to his lawful boundaries, from his hastily asserted dominion over the Southern Ocean.  Thus strengthening and consolidating the federative edifice of his country’s Union, till he was entitled to say, like Augustus Caesar of his imperial city, that he had found her built of brick and left her constructed of marble.”  —- John Quincy Adams, 1831

“If Mr. Monroe should ever fill the Chair of Government he may (and it is presumed he would be well enough disposed) let the French Minister frame his speeches…There is abundant evidence of his being mere tool in the hands of the French government.”  —- George Washington, 1797

“I consider Monroe a pretty minor President.  In spite of the Monroe Doctrine.  That’s the only important thing he ever did more or less on his own, when you really get down to it.”  —- Harry Truman

J. Q. ADAMS
“Mr. Adams is the most valuable public character we have abroad…There remains no doubt in my mind that he will prove himself to be the ablest, of all our diplomatic corps.”  —- George Washington, 1797

“It is said he is a disgusting man to do business.  Coarse, dirty and clownish in his address and stiff and abstracted in his opinions, which are drawn from books exclusively.”  —- William Henry Harrison

“The single really interesting thing about Adams, I’m afraid, is that he was the only son of a President in our history to become President himself…He was a conscientious and well-meaning man, and I wish I could say more about his achievements…I just don’t think there were any events in Adams’ administration that were very interesting.”  —- Harry Truman

“His disposition is as perverse and mulish as that of his father.”  —- James Buchanan

“Mr. Adams’ general personal demeanor was not prepossessing.  He was on the contrary quite awkward, but…he was, in a small and agreeable party, one of the most entertaining table companions of his day…He loved his country, desired to serve it, and was properly conscious of the honor of doing so.”  —- Martin Van Buren

JACKSON
“I never knew a man more free from conceit, or one to whom it was to a greater extent a pleasure, as well as a recognized duty, to listen patiently to what might be said to him upon any subject.”  —- Martin Van Buren

“I fell much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President.  He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place.  He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief.  His passions are terrible.  When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings.  I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage.  His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.”  —- Thomas Jefferson

“As the people have twice decided this man knows enough law to be their ruler, it is not for Harvard College to maintain that they are mistaken.  I would not be present to see my darling Harvard disgrace herself by conferring a Doctor’s degree upon a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name…One of our tribe of great men who turn disease to commodity…he craves the sympathy for sickness as a portion of his glory.”  —- John Quincy Adams, 1833, protesting Harvard’s decision to confer an honorary doctorate on President Jackson.

“Jackson is my next choice as a great President after Jefferson, the next President who really did things.”  —- Harry Truman

VAN BUREN
“I…believe him not only deserving of my confidence but the confidence of the Nation…He…is not only well qualified, but desires to fill the highest office in the gift of the people, who in him, will find a true friend and safe repository of their rights and liberty.”  —- Andrew Jackson, 1829

“Fawning civility.  Van Buren, like the Sosie of Moliere’s Amphitryon, is ‘l’ami de tout le monde’.  This is perhaps the great secret of his success in public life, and especially against the competitors with whom he is now struggling for the last step on the ladder of his ambition…Van Buren’s principle is the talisman of democracy, which, so long as this Union lasts, can never fail.”  —- John Quincy Adams, 1836

“Mr. Van Buren became offended with me at the beginning of my administration, because I chose to exercise my own judgment in the selection of my own Cabinet, and would not be controlled by him and suffer him to select it for me.  Mr. Van Buren is the most fallen man I have ever known.”  —- James K. Polk, 1847

“I’ve got to say that our country would have done just as well not to have had Van Buren as President…My particular reason for not thinking much of him is that he was just too timid and indecisive.  I don’t know whether or not he even had any personal philosophy on the role of government; I think he was a man who was always worrying about what might happen if he did this or that, and always keeping his ear to the ground to the point where he couldn’t act as the chief executive, and for that reason he was just a politician and nothing more, a politician who was out of his depth.”  —- Harry Truman

W. H. HARRISON
“It is true, the victory of 1840 did not produce the happy results anticipated; but it is equally true, as we believe, that the unfortunate death of General Harrison was the cause of failure.  It was not the election of General Harrison that was expected to produce happy effects, but the measures to be adopted by his administration.  By means of his death, and the unexpected course of his successor, those measures were never adopted.”  —- Abraham Lincoln, 1843

“The greatest beggar and the most troublesome of all the office seekers during my Administration was General Harrison.”  —- John Quincy Adams, 1840

“The Republic…may suffer under the present imbecile cheif, but the sober second thought of the people will restore it at our next Presidential election.”  —- Andrew Jackson, 1841

“Harrison didn’t accomplish a thing during the month he was in office.  He made contribution whatsoever.  He had no policy.  He didn’t know what the government was about, to tell the truth.  About the only thing he did during that brief period was see friends and friends of friends, because he was such an easy mark that he couldn’t say no to anybody, and everybody and his brother was beseeching him for jobs.”  —- Harry Truman

“The President is the most extraordinary man I ever saw.  He does not seem to realize the vast importance of his elevation…He talks and thinks with…much ease and vivacity…He is as tickled with the Presidency as is a young woman with a new bonnet.” —- Martin Van Buren, 1841

TYLER
“A kind and overruling providence has interfered to prolong our glorious Union…for surely Tyler…[will], stay the corruptions of this clique who has got into power by deluding the people by the grossest of slanders.”  —- Andrew Jackson, on the death of President Harrison and succession of John Tyler, 1841

“(Tyler deserves) the lasting gratitude of his country (for) arresting the dominant majority in Congress in their mad career, and saving his country from the dominion and political incubus of the money-power in the form of a National Bank.”  —- James K. Polk, 1841

“Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, principled against all improvement, with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and political constitution —- with talents not above mediocrity, and a spirit incapable of expansion to the dimensions of the station upon which he has been cast by the hand of Providence.”  —- John Quincy Adams, 1841

“Old John didn’t amount to a great deal and his purported great nephew probably won’t either.”  —- Harry Truman, Jan. 21, 1946 letter to Ethel Noland on reports that he was a great nephew of the 10th President.

“One of the Presidents we could have done without…There are some things I admire about Tyler, but there were also plenty of things that weren’t so admirable…The reason I have a certain amount of grudging respect for John Tyler is that he knew his own mind and stuck to his decisions.”  —- Harry Truman

“He established the precedent that the Vice President becomes the President in fact when he succeeds to the office.  Tyler had his troubles with Congress, his cabinet and the country, but he succeeded in annexing Texas.  Now whether that accomplishment was an asset or not I’m unable to say.”  —- Harry Truman, diary, Nov. 24, 1952

“No one can charge John Tyler with a lack of courage.  He resigned from the Senate because he did not agree with Andrew Jackson, but I could never forgive him for leaving his party to join the Whigs, or for leaving the Union in 1861 —- although I must admit he did make an effort to hold the Union together.”  —- Harry Truman, letter to Stephen Chadwick, Dec. 10, 1955.

POLK
“Polk…is just qualified for an eminent County Court lawyer…He has no wit, no literature, no point of argument, no gracefulness of delivery, no elegance of language, no philosophy, no pathos, no felicitous impromptus; nothing that can constitute an orator, but confidence, fluency, and labor.”  —- John Quincy Adams, 1834

“I more than suspect that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong, —- that he feels the blood of this (the Mexican) war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him…He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.”  —- Abraham Lincoln, 1848

“Polk’s appointments all in all are the most damnable set that was ever made by any President since the government was organized…He has a set of interested parasites about him, who flatter him until he does not know himself.  He seems to be acting upon the principle of hanging an old friend for the purpose of making two new ones.”  —- Andrew Johnson

“To extraordinary powers of labor, both mental and physical, he unites that tact and judgment which are requisite to the successful direction of such an office as that of Chief Magistrate of a free people.” —- Andrew Jackson, 1844

“James K. Polk…proved an excellent embodiment of the principles of the Democrats.  He had been well known in the House of Representatives, over which he had presided as Speaker, and where he had served most honorably, if without distinction.  He was a southerner, and fully committed in favor of annexation.  Though in no sense a man of brilliant parts, he may be said to have been a thoroughly representative man of his class, a sturdy, upright, straightforward party man.  He believed in the policy for which his party had declared, and he meant, if elected, to carry it out.”  —- Woodrow Wilson, 1902

“The next man on my list of great Presidents, a man who isn’t much thought of these days, is James K. Polk…He exercised his powers of the Presidency as I think they should be exercised.  He was President during the Mexican War, and he was living in an age when the terrible burden of making decisions in a war was entirely in the hands of the President.  And when that came about, he decided that that was much more important than going to parties and shaking hands with people.  I know exactly how he felt, but in my time there were more able and informed people who were helping the President, and that made a difference.  James K. Polk, a great President.  Said what he intended to do and did it.”  —- Harry Truman, 1960

TAYLOR
“Gen’l Taylor is, I have no doubt, a well meaning old man.  He is, however, uneducated, exceedingly ignorant of public affairs, and, I should judge, of very ordinary capacity.”  —- James K. Polk, Diary entry following Taylor’s Inauguration, Mar. 5, 1849

“It did not happen to General Taylor, once in his life, to fight a battle on equal terms, or on terms advantageous to himself —- and yet he was never beaten, and he never retreated…General Taylor’s battles were not distinguished for brilliant military maneuvers; but in all he seems rather to have conquered by the exercise of a sober and steady judgment, coupled with a dogged incapacity to understand that defeat was possible.”  —- Abraham Lincoln, 1850

“Zachary Taylor was one of the do-nothing Presidents…When Taylor became President of the United States, I don’t think he knew what to do.  I can’t be charitable and say that he failed to carry out his program; he didn’t have any program to carry out, so he couldn’t fail because he had no program.  He was elected just as a military figure, and he spent his year in office behaving like a retired general…A President…must have ideas and imagination as to what’s needed for the good of the country, and he can create conditions that will make him great, or he can take things as they are and do nothing, like Taylor.  Taylor certainly became expert at doing nothing.”  —- Harry Truman

FILLMORE
“I cannot forbear to express here my regret at (Fillmore’s) retirement in the present emergency from (Congress).  There, or elsewhere, I hope and trust he will soon return for whether to the nation or to the state, no service can be or ever will be rendered by a more able or a more faithful public servant.”  —- John Quincy Adams, 1843

“The long-continued and useful public service and eminent purity of character of the deceased ex-President will be remembered.”  —- Ulysses S. Grant, 1874

“Mr. Fillmore was…a man more amenable to the control of the leaders of Congress and of his party than the sturdy soldier had been whom he succeeded.”  —- Woodrow Wilson

“Another of those detached, do-nothing Presidents…He had no regular viewpoint on anything…He was a man who changed with the wind, and as President of the United States he didn’t do anything that’s worth pointing out.”  —- Harry Truman

PIERCE
“It is his peculiar distinction, above all other public men within my knowledge, that he has never had occasion to take a single step backwards.  What speech, vote, or sentiment of his whole political career has been inconsistent with the purest and strictest principles of Jeffersonian Democracy? …Our candidate, throughout his life, has proved himself to be peculiarly unselfish.  The offices and honors which other men seek with so much eagerness, have sought him only to be refused…Indeed, the public character of General Pierce is so invulnerable that it has scarcely been seriously assaulted.”  —- James Buchanan, 1852

“(Pierce was) a small politician, of low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and abler.  He was ever ready to do any work the slavery leaders set him.”  Theodore Roosevelt

“Pierce was a nincompoop…It was Pierce’s foolish notion that he could cool down the slavery question and make people forget about it by doing two things:  filling his cabinet with people of different viewpoints, and concentrating almost entirely on foreign policy and territorial expansion instead of slavery problems.  But the net result was that his cabinet members kept bickering with each other and didn’t accomplish much, and Pierce’s moves in other directions didn’t distract people’s attention from the slavery problems for a minute…Pierce was one of the best-looking men ever in the White House.  He was also one of the most vain, which I guess was on account of the fact that he was so good-looking.  But though he looked the way people who make movies think a President should look, he didn’t pay any more attention to business as President of the United States than the man in the moon, and he really made a mess of things…Pierce was the best-looking President the White House ever had —- but as President he ranks with Buchanan and Calvin Coolidge.”  —- Harry Truman, 1952

“Pierce didn’t know what was going on, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have known what to do about it.” —- Harry Truman

“(Pierce) always had the stomach ache or a pain in the neck when there was a shooting engagement in Mexico.”  —- Harry Truman, Aug. 26, 1960

JAMES BUCHANAN
“In 1856…I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone succession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell.  With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years…I therefore voted for James Buchanan for President.”  —- Ulysses S. Grant, 1885

“It was as far as I could send him out of my sight, and where he could do the least harm.  I would have sent him to the North Pole if we had kept a minister there!”  —- Andrew Jackson explaining his appointment of Buchanan as minister to Russia in 1845 after complaining about James Polk’s nomination of Buchanan as Secretary of State.

“Whatever may have been the effect of Mr. Buchanan’s elevation to the Presidency and of the possession of its overshadowing powers upon himself he was, assuredly, before that occurrence a cautious, circumspect, and sagacious man.” —- Martin Van Buren

“All his acts and opinions seem to be with a view to his own advancement…Mr. Buchanan is an able man, but is in small matters without judgment and sometimes acts like an old maid.” —- James K. Polk

“James Buchanan…hesitated and backtracked and felt that his constitutional prerogative didn’t allow him to do things, and he ended up doing absolutely nothing and threw everything into Lincoln’s lap.” —- Harry Truman

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has ever known.”  —- Jefferson Davis

“(Lincoln) is to the extent of his limited ability and narrow intelligence (the abolitionists’) willing instrument for all the woe which (has) thus far been brought upon the Country and for all the degradation, all the atrocity, all the desolation and ruin.”  —- Franklin Pierce

“Lincoln had a very deep feeling for people, but…he could be tough in a crisis.  No one pushed him around.  He was a very skillful political operator.”  —- Richard Nixon

“Lincoln in his period suspended habeus corpus, allowing military authorities to arrest and try people accused of helping the South or impeding Federal troops, and he did several other things that he had to do in order to save the Union at the time.  He dismissed the Circuit Court of Appeals and appointed new judges in the District of Columbia and extended the Supreme Court from seven members to eleven.  But all of the former protections were restored when the emergency was over.  Abraham Lincoln, a strong executive who saved the government, saved the United States…My people didn’t think much of Lincoln, but I thought he was wonderful.  It took me a long time to come to that realization, however, because my family were all against him and all thought it was a fine thing he got assassinated.  (Well, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.)  I began to feel just the opposite after I’d studied the history of the country and what he did to save the Union.”  —- Harry Truman

“Lincoln had faith in time, and time has justified his faith.”  —- Benjamin Harrison

“If Lincoln had lived, he would have done no better than Johnson.”  —- Harry Truman

Presidents Talk About Presidents

(ANDREW JOHNSON-DWIGHT EISENHOWER)

ANDREW JOHNSON
“No man has a right to judge Andrew Johnson in any respect who has not suffered as much and done as much as he for the Nation’s sake.”  —- Abraham Lincoln, 1864

“One of the people by birth, he remained so by convinction, continually referring to his opinion…He was indifferent to money and careless of praise or censure.”  —- Jefferson Davis, 1865

“Professing to be a Democrat, he has been politically if not personally hostile to me during my whole term (as President).  He is very vindictive and perverse in his temper and conduct.  If he had the manliness or independence to manifest his opposition openly, he knows he could not be again elected by his constituents.”  —- James K. Polk, 1849

“Andrew Johnson wasn’t too bad, but he was overwhelmed by a hostile Congress.”  —- Harry Truman

“I have never been so tired of anything before as I have been with the political speeches of Mr. Johnson…I look upon them as a national disgrace.”  —- Ulysses S. Grant

ULYSSES S. GRANT
“Grant had come out of the war the greatest of all.  It is true that the rebels were on their last legs, and that the Southern ports were pretty effectually blockaded and that Grant was furnished with all the men that were needed or could be spared after he took command of the army of the Potomac.  But Grant helped more than any one else to bring about this condition.  His great victories at Donelson, Vicksburg, and Missionary Ridge all contributed to Appomattox…Grant has treated me badly; but he was the right man in the right place during the war, and no matter what his faults were or are, the whole world can never write him down.”  —- Andrew Johnson

“I cannot spare this man; he fights.”  —- Abraham Lincoln

“When General Grant once gets possession of a place he seems to hang onto it as if he inherited it.”  —- Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

“He is a scientific Goth, resembling Alaric, destroying the country as he goes and delivering the people over to starvation.  Nor does he bury his head, but leaves them to rot on the battlefield.”  —- John Tyler

“Faithful and fearless as a volunteer soldier, intrepid and invincible as Commander-In-Chief of the Armies of the Union and confident as President of a reunited and strengthened nation, which his genius has been instrumental in achieving, he has our homage and that of the world; but brilliant as was his public character, we love him all the more for his homelife and homely virtues.”  —- William McKinley, 1897

“He has done more than any other President to degrade the character of Cabinet officers by choosing them on the model of the military staff, because of their pleasant personal relation to him and not because of their national reputation and the public needs…His imperturbability is amazing.  I am in doubt whether to call it greatness or stupidity.”  —- James Garfield, 1874

“The honest, simple-hearted soldier had not added prestige to the Presidential office.  He himself knew that he had failed…that he ought never to have been made President.  He combined great gifts with great mediocrity.”  —- Woodrow Wilson, 1902

“Ulysses Simpson Grant’s period in office seems to prove the theory that we can coast along for eight years without a President…Grant’s period as President was one of the low points in our history…I don’t think Grant knew very much about what the President’s job was except that he was Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces.  That was the thing, I think, that impressed him more than anything, and he was pretty naïve or ignorant about everything else…He wasn’t even a chief executive; he was another sleepwalker whose administration was even more crooked than Warren Harding’s, if that’s possible.”  —- Harry Truman

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
“He was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home.  He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.”  —- Benjamin Harrison, 1893

“The policy of the President has turned out to be a give-away from the beginning.  He has nulled suits, discontinued prosecutions, offered conciliation everywhere in the South, while they have spent their time in whetting their knives for any Republican they could find…No nickname can be pinned to him”  —- James Garfield

“Mr. Hayes had as little political authority as Mr. Johnson had had…He had no real hold upon the country.  His amiable character, his lack of party heat, his conciliatory attitude towards the South alienated rather than attracted the members of his party in Congress…The Democrats did not like him because he seemed to them incapable of frank, consistent action.”  —- Woodrow Wilson, 1902

“Elected by a fluke and knew it, and he did his level best to do a good job.” —- Harry Truman

JAMES GARFIELD
“There is a great deal of strength in Garfield’s life and struggles as a self-made man…From poverty and obscurity, by labor at all avocations, he became a great scholar, a statesman, a major general, a Senator, a Presidential candidate…The truth is, no man ever started so low that accomplished so much, in all our history.  Not Franklin or Lincoln even.”  —- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1880

“I am completely disgusted with Garfield’s course…Garfield has shown that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angle worm.”  —- Ulysses S. Grant, 1881

“He was not executive in his talents —- not original, not firm, not a moral force.  He leaned on others —- could not face a frowning world; his habits suffered from Washington life.  His course at various times when trouble came betrayed weakness.”  —- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1883

“A smooth, ready, pleasant man, not very strong.”  —- Rutherford B. Hayes

“Who of us, having heard him here or elsewhere, speaking on a question of great national concern, can forget the might and majesty, the force and directness, the grace and beauty of his utterances?…He did not flash forth as a meteor; he rose with measured and stately step over rough paths and through years of rugged work.”  —- William McKinley, 1896

CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR
“Nothing like it ever before in the Executive Mansion —- liquor, snobbery, and worse…On (the civil service question) he evidently has no faith in the reform, but in deference to public sentiment, he yields so far as to recommend an appropriation of $25,000 to carry it out and express a readiness to (do) so.”  —- Rutherford B. Hayes, 1881

“A nonentity with side whiskers.” —- Woodrow Wilson

“The only thing that stands out about Arthur is that he took all the wonderful furniture that had been brought to this country by Jefferson, Monroe, and several of the other Presidents of that period and sold it in an auction for about $6,500.” —- Harry Truman

GROVER CLEVELAND
“A clear-headed, methodical, unimaginative President…(who) played a leading and decisive part in the quiet drama of our national life…In the midst of the shifting scene Mr. Cleveland personally came to seem the only fixed point.  He alone stood firm and gave definite utterance to principles intelligible to all.”  —- Woodrow Wilson, 1907

“What in the world has Grover Cleveland done?  Will you tell me?  You give it up?  I have been looking for six weeks for a Democrat who could tell me what Cleveland has done for the good of his country and for the benefit of the people, but I have not found him…He says himself…that two thirds of his time has been uselessly spent with Democrats who want office…Now he has been so occupied in that way that he has not done anything else.”  —- William McKinley, 1885

“He was a great President in his first term; in his second term, he wasn’t the same Grover Cleveland he was to begin with…Cleveland reestablished the Presidency by being not only a chief executive, but a leader.”  —- Harry Truman

BENJAMIN HARRISON
“Damn the President!  He is a cold-blooded, narrow-minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid old psalm-singing Indianapolis politician.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt, 1890

“The President is not popular with the members of either house (of Congress).  His manner of treating them is not at all fortunate, and when they have an interview with him, they generally come away mad.”  —- William Howard Taft

“I tend to pair up Benjamin Harrison and Dwight Eisenhower because they’re the two Presidents I can think of who most preferred laziness to labor…There’s not much else you can say about Harrison except that he was President of the United States.” —- Harry Truman

WILLIAM McKINLEY
“William McKinley has left us a priceless gift in the example of a useful and pure life, in his fidelity to public trusts and in his demonstration of the value of kindly virtues that not only ennoble but lead to success.”  —- Grover Cleveland, 1901

“McKinley has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt, 1897

“He had such a good heart that the right thing to do always occurred to him.”  —- William Howard Taft, 1916

“McKinley didn’t turn out to be much of a President.” —- Harry Truman

“There have been people who suggest my ideas would take us back to the days of McKinley.  Well, what’s wrong with that?  Under McKinley, we freed Cuba.”  —- Ronald Reagan, 1976

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
“(He) wanted to put an end to all the evil in the world between sunrise and sunset.” —- Benjamin Harrison, sarcastically referring to Roosevelt’s energetic nature.

“Well, the mad Roosevelt has a new achievement to his credit.  He succeeded in defeating the party that furnished him a job for nearly all of his manhood days after leaving the ranch, and showed his gratitude for the Presidency, at that party’s hands.  The eminent fakir can now turn to raising hell, his specialty, along other lines.”  —- Warren G. Harding, 1912

“Utterly without conscience and regard for truth, the greatest fakir of all times.” —- Warren G. Harding

“I am afraid he is too pugnacious…I want peace and I am told that…Theodore is always getting into rows with everybody.”  —- William McKinley, 1897

“A megalomaniac…My judgment is that the view of…Mr. Roosevelt, ascribing an undefined residuum of power to the President is an unsafe doctrine, and that it might lead under emergencies to results of an arbitrary character, doing irremediable injustice to private right.”  —- William Howard Taft

“He is a real, vivid person.” —- Woodrow Wilson

“Theodore Roosevelt was always getting himself in hot water by talking before he had to commit himself upon issues not well-defined.”  —- Calvin Coolidge, 1932

“In my view, missed being a great President, though only by a narrow margin.  The trouble with Teddy Roosevelt is that, though he was the President who finally awakened to the fact that the welfare of the country was wrapped up in…the forests and the mines and the other things the country owned…he had his troubles with Congress and he had his troubles with the trusts, and he didn’t get a heck of a lot done.  He finally got to be called a trustbuster, but he didn’t bust very many of them…He ended up adding up to more talk than achievement.” —- Harry Truman

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
“For all (his) greatness and kindness and generous good nature, there never existed a man who was a better fighter when the need arose…I do not believe there can be found in the whole country a man so well fitted to be President.  He is not only absolutely fearless, absolutely disinterested and upright, but he has the widest acquaintance with the nation’s needs without and within and the broadest sympathies with all our citizens.  He would be as emphatically a President of the plain people as Lincoln, yet not Lincoln himself would be freer from the least taint of demagogy, the least tendency to arouse or appeal to any class hatred of any kind.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt, 1908

“He’s all right.  He means well and he’ll do his best.  But he’s weak.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt, March 2, 1909 (two days before Taft, his hand-picked successor, took office)

“Taft, who is such an admirable fellow, has shown himself such an utterly commonplace leader, good-natured, feebly well-meaning, but with plenty of small motive; and totally unable to grasp or put into execution any great policy…a flubdub with a streak of the second rate and the common in him…a fathead and a puzzlewit…He is evidently a man who takes color from his surroundings.  He was an excellent man under me, and close to me…He has not the slightest idea of what is necessary if this country is to make social and industrial progress.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt

“(Taft is) as wise and patient as Abraham Lincoln, as modest and dauntless as Ulysses S. Grant, as temperate and peace-loving as Rutherford B. Hayes, as patriotic and intellectual as James A. Garfield, as courtly and generous as Chester A. Arthur, as learned in the law as Benjamin Harrison, as sympathetic and brave as William McKinley, as progressive as his predecessor.”  —- Warren G. Harding, 1912

“A fat, jolly, likeable, mediocre man.” —- Harry Truman

“To me he was a friend, kindly, genial, and helpful.  He often came to my office when I was in Washington and always brought mature thought and good cheer.”  —- Calvin Coolidge

“Mr. Taft’s service to our country has been of rare distinction and was marked by a purity of patriotism, a lofty disinterestedness, and a devotion to the best interests of the nation that deserve and will ever command the grateful memory of his countrymen.”  —- Herbert Hoover, 1930

WOODROW WILSON
“(Wilson) is a clean, learned, honorable, and patriotic man.”  —- Warren G. Harding, 1913

“Three qualities of greatness stood out in Woodrow Wilson.  He was a man of staunch morals.  He was more than just an idealist; he was the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people.  He brought spiritual concepts to the peace table.  He was a born crusader.”  —- Herbert Hoover, 1958

“I wish to make one comment on the statement so frequently made that we must stand by the President.  I heartily subscribe to this on condition, and only on condition, that it is followed by the statement ‘so long the President stands by the country’.  Presidents differ just like other folks.  No man could effectively stand by President Lincoln unless he had stood against President Buchanan.  If after the firing on Fort Sumter President Lincoln had in a public speech announced that the believes in the Union were too proud to fight; and if, instead of action, there had been three months of admirable elocutionary correspondence with Jefferson Davis, by midsummer the friends of the Union would have followed Horace Greeley’s advice to let the erring sisters go in peace, for peace at any rate was put above righteousness by some mistaken soul, just as it is at the present day.” —- Theodore Roosevelt, August 1915

“I regard him as a ruthless hypocrite, and as an opportunist, who has not convictions that he would not barter at once for votes…He surrenders a conviction, previously expressed, without the slightest hesitation, and never even vouchsafes to the public the arguments upon which he was induced to change his mind.”  —- William Howard Taft, 1916

“A very adroit…(but not forceful) hypocrite…He has made our statesmanship a thing of empty elocution.  He has covered his fear of standing for the right behind a veil of rhetorical phrases.  He has wrapped the true heart of the nation in a spangled shroud of rhetoric…For Heaven’s sake never allude to Wilson as an idealist or militaire or altruist.  He is a doctrinaire when he can be so with safety to his personal ambition…He hasn’t a touch of idealism in him.  His advocacy of the League of Nations no more represents idealism on his part than his advocacy of peace without victory…He is a silly doctrinaire at times and an utterly selfish and cold-blooded politician always.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt, 1919

“I saw a snapshot photograph of him the night he landed in Washington…it was about the most pathetic picture I have ever seen.  He really looked like a perfectly helpless imbecile.”  —- Warren Harding, writing to his wife about Wilson’s incapacitated health situation following Wilson’s massive stroke in 1919

“I count Woodrow Wilson among the five or six great Presidents of our country.  Had he been a better politican his program would have gone over as it eventually had to go over under Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.”  —- Harry Truman, letter to Agnes E. Meyer, June 25, 1960.

WARREN G. HARDING
“Utterly unacceptable.”  —- Theodore Roosevelt, on Harding’s Presidential prospects

“My natural affiliations are with Harding of Ohio, who is a good man and to whom I am indebted for very effective support in 1912…(Harding is a good man) with many elements that made McKinley successful.” —— William Howard Taft, January 1920

“He caught the ear of a war-tired world.  He called our country back to paths of peace and gladly it came.  He beckoned the nations to come and sit in council…He sought for men and nations a peace, the only true and lasting peace, based on justice and right…So he led the way to the monumental accomplishments of the Washington Conference on Limitation of Armament.”  —- Calvin Coolidge, 1923

“Harding is incapable of thought because he has nothing to think with.”  —- Woodrow Wilson

“It is heartbreaking to be so near as we are to a fool of a President…He is often ridiculous.”  —- Woodrow Wilson, Aug. 15, 1922 letter to Cleveland Dodge.

“Lightweight that he is.  Harding will certainly sink whenever he tries to swim.”  —- Woodrow Wilson, Nov. 28, 1922 letter to Charles Dana Gibson.

“He voted in a way that he hoped would make him popular with other people in his party even when his personal convictions ran the other way.”  —- Harry Truman

“He was not a man with either the experience or the intellectual quality that the position (of President) needed.”  —- Herbert Hoover

CALVIN COOLIDGE
“He is very self-contained, very simple, very direct and very shrewd in his observations.”  —- William Howard Taft, 1923

“Mr. Coolidge is a high-minded public servant of the type which Massachusetts has always been honorably anxious to see at the head of the state government; a man who has the forward look and who is anxious to secure genuine social and industrial justice in the only way it can effectively be secured, that is, by basing a jealous insistence upon the rights of all, on the foundation of legislation that will guarantee the welfare of all.” —- Theodore Roosevelt

“(He) was a real conservative, probably the equal of Benjamin Harrison.”  —- Herbert Hoover

“He was quite a character, and there are a lot of funny stories about him, but I guess pretty nearly the only thing I like about him are those stories.  Otherwise, his ideas about being President were exactly in the same line as the President who preceded him.  He believed that the less a President did, the better it was for the country, and I don’t agree with that at all.  He sat with his feet in his desk drawer and did nothing.”  —- Harry Truman

“You hear a lot of jokes every once in a while about “Silent Cal Coolidge”.  The joke is on the people who make the jokes.  Look at his record.  He cut the taxes four times.  We had probably the greatest growth and prosperity that we’ve ever known.  I have taken heed of that because if he did that by doing nothing, maybe that’s the answer.”  —- Ronald Reagan, 1981

HERBERT HOOVER
“The smartest geek I know.”  —- Warren G. Harding

“I have the feeling that he would rather see a good cause fail than succeed if he were not the head of it.”  —- Woodrow Wilson

“In its deliberate moments, the country does not want a dictatorial and autocratic personality like that we know our friend, Hoover, to possess.  There is no doubt about his ability.” —- Warren G. Harding, February 1920

“Hoover, of all the candidates, is more ideally fitted for this particular line of administrative work than any other, and I am especially gratified to see the apparent interest in Hoover’s candidacy in the solid South.” —- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mar. 15, 1920

“He is a real man…one of the very ablest men we have sent over there…a great international figure.  Such me stir me deeply and make me in love with duty!” —- Woodrow Wilson

“That man has offered me unsolicited advice for the past six years, all of it bad.”  —- Calvin Coolidge

“I had some nice talks with Herbert Hoover before he went west for Christmas.  He is certainly a wonder, and I wish we could make him President of the United States.  There could not be a better one.  —- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jan. 2, 1920

“I accuse the present administration of being the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all our history.  It is an administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs of and the reduced earning power of the people.”  —- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT
“I’m making a strange wish for you, little man; a wish I suppose no one else would make.  I wish for you that you may never be President of the United States.”  —- Grover Cleveland, 1890’s, when he was introduced to a toddler named Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“He was the one person I ever knew, anywhere, who was never afraid…He was always like a daddy to me.”  —- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1945

“He lies.”  —- Harry Truman, to Senator Owen Brewster in 1944 when Brewster asked what FDR was really like.

“He was a great, great President.  He had the ability to make people believe he was right and go along with the things he wanted to do, and he was also very daring in his actions…As a person…I liked him.  I liked him a lot.  He was a very easy person to like because he was a very, very pleasant man and a great conversationalist, with marvelous flashes of humor in almost everything he said, and he had a personality that made people feel close to him…He had defects, of course…For one thing, he was a first-rate executive, never afraid to make those decisions he made, but he wasn’t a good administrator because he just wasn’t able to delegate authority to anybody else.  He wanted to be in a position where he could say yes or no to everything without anyone’s ever arguing with him or questioning him, and of course you can’t do that in our system of checks and balances.  It goes without saying that I am highly impressed by him for a thousand reasons, but a main reason is that he inherited a situation that was almost as bad as the one that Lincoln had, and he dealt with it…I’ll be mentioning FDR many times in this book…and saying a lot more about him…Anybody who’s looking for any comments that are less than admiring had better go to the bookstore and see if he can get his money back…Roosevelt was the man who brought about the recovery from the terrible depression we had in 1929 and 1930 and 1931, and he was the man who persisted in the manner that won the Second World War.  Isn’t that enough to make us think of him almost as a god?  It is in my book.”  —- Harry Truman

“Mr. Roosevelt has contributed to the end of capitalism in our own country, although he would probably argue the point at some length.  He has done this not through the laws which he sponsored or were passed during his Presidency, but rather through the emphasis he put on rights rather than responsibilities.”  —- John F. Kennedy

“A chameleon on plaid.”  —- Herbert Hoover, 1932

“With some of Mr. Roosevelt’s political acts I could never possibly agree.  But I knew him solely in his capacity as leader of a nation at war —- and in that capacity he seemed to me to fulfill all that could possibly be expected of him.”  —- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1948

“Along with currency manipulation, the New Deal introduced to Americans the spectacle of Fascist dictation to business, labor and agriculture.”  —- Herbert Hoover, 1952

HARRY TRUMAN
“When the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thrust him suddenly into the Presidency in April of 1945 at one of the most critical moments of our history, he met that moment with courage and vision.  His farsighted leadership in the postwar era has helped ever since to preserve peace and freedom in the world.”  —- Richard Nixon, 1972

“Truman was considered to be a very down-to-earth fellow, but believe me, he didn’t want any familiarity with him, except for his close friends.”  —- Richard Nixon

DWIGHT EISENHOWER
“The sturdy and enduring virtues —- honor, courage, integrity, decency, all found eloquent expression in the life of this good man and noble leader.”  —- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1969

“The greatest leader of the atomic age…A man who ranks among the greatest legendary heroes of this nation…President Eisenhower’s whole life is proof of the stark but simple truth that no one hates war more than one who has seen a lot…(In the Presidency), he was a far more complex and devious man than most people realized, and in the best sense of those words.  Not shackled to a one-track mind, he always applied two, three, or four lines of reasoning to a single problem and he usually preferred the indirect approach where it would serve him better than the direct attack on a problem.  His mind was quick and facile.”  —- Richard Nixon

“Why, this fellow don’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday…A glamorous military hero, glorified by the press…If Eisenhower should become President, his administration would make Grant’s look like a model of perfection.”  —- Harry Truman, 1950

“All I’ll say now is that when the people elect a man to the Presidency who doesn’t take care of the job, they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.  The trouble with Eisenhower he’s just a coward.  He hasn’t got any backbone at all…Ike didn’t know anything, and all the time he was in office he didn’t learn a thing…In 1959, when Castro came to power down in Cuba, Ike just sat on his ass and acted like if he didn’t notice what was going on down there, why, maybe Castro would go away or something.”  —- Harry Truman, 1961

“Eisenhower, with that famous grin and so forth —- but he didn’t like to be (physically) touched.  What I mean by that is that, of course, he would shake hands and all the rest.  But he didn’t want people to come up and throw their arms around him and say, ‘Hi, Ike’”.  —- Richard Nixon

“People think they knew Eisenhower.  Not really.  There isn’t a good biography on Eisenhower.  They are either puff pieces or pieces that are totally frivolous.  And he was a very complex fellow.  People, when they talk about him as this nice, good man, who sort of presided in a genteel way —- they forget that the guy who ordered the landing in Normandy when everything was on the line was no softhead.”  —- Richard Nixon

“(Nobody ever called me Dick or Richard).  None did.  That was just the way I did it.  And Eisenhower was exactly the same way.  I perhaps learned a lot from Eisenhower.  With President Eisenhower, it was always ‘Mr. President’ from me.  I, of course, was younger than Eisenhower.  I never called him ‘Ike’ and I never referred to him in my conversations with others as ‘Ike’.  He was ‘the President’ or ‘the General’.” —- Richard Nixon

Presidents Talk About Presidents

(KENNEDY-OBAMA)

JOHN F. KENNEDY
“The greatest leader of our time.”  —- Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963

“He leaves little doubt that his idea of the ‘challenging new world’ is one in which the Federal Government will grow bigger and do more and of course spend more…Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx.”  —- Ronald Reagan, 1960

“During these first two weeks (of the 1960 campaign), Kennedy concentrated on building up what I characterized as a “poor mouth” image of America….He seized on every possible shortcoming and inequity in American life and promised immediate cure-alls.”  —- Richard Nixon

“Kennedy was the same way (didn’t like to be touched physically).  Despite the fact that he had the reputation of being, you know, very glamorous and the rest, he had a certain privacy about him, a certain sense of dignity.”  —- Richard Nixon

“(The Kennedy Administration’s) difficulty appears to stem primarily from an inadequate understanding of our American system —- of how it really works, of the psychological, motivational and economic factors that make it ebb and flow.”  —- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1963

“The enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table-clearing and dishwashing begins.” —- Lyndon Johnson on the timing of JFK’s assassination

“I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for, and President Kennedy died for.” —- Lyndon Johnson

“John Kennedy was a victim of hate, but he was also a great builder of faith —- faith in our fellow Americans, whatever their creed or their color or their station in life; faith in the future of man, whatever his divisions and differences.  This faith was echoed in all parts of the world.  On every continent and in every land to which Mrs. Johnson and I traveled, we found faith and hope and love toward this land of America and toward our people.”  —- Lyndon Johnson

“John was great, but all John had was the press.  He was still an elitist; he didn’t like the rope line.  This guy loves the rope line —- and the rope line loves him.”  —- Gerald Ford, on the differences between JFK and Clinton

LYNDON JOHNSON
“Millions of Americans will always remember a bitter day in November, 1963, when so many of our people doubted the very future of this Republic…Lyndon Johnson rose above the doubt and the fear to hold this Nation on course until we rediscovered our faith in ourselves.”  —- Richard Nixon, 1973

“A good man to help out with naval matters.” —- Franklin D. Roosevelt

“He is a small man.  He hasn’t got the depth of mind nor the breadth of vision to carry great responsibility…Johnson is superficial and opportunistic.”  —- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960

“Several nights ago, I dreamed that the good Lord touched me on the shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be the Democratic Presidential nominee in 1960.  What’s more, you’ll be elected.’  I told Stu Symington about my dream.  ‘Funny thing,’ said Stu, ‘I had exactly the same dream myself.’  We both told our dreams to Lyndon Johnson, and Johnson said, ‘That’s funny.  For the life of me, I can’t remember tapping either of you two boys for the job.’” —- John F. Kennedy

“People said my language was bad but, Jesus, you should have heard LBJ!” —- Richard Nixon

“Johnson was one who believed in touching the flesh, and the rest.” —- Richard Nixon

“I had never been in the President’s bedroom.  Except on one occasion —- not when Eisenhower was there, but when Johnson was there.  I came to a Gridiron Dinner, and after the dinner Johnson invited me to come up and have breakfast with him.  He had stayed up late after the dinner.  He had developed a terrible sore throat, laryngitis, and was in bed.  So that was really the first time I was ever in that bedroom.  Here was Johnson propped up on one of these big king-sized beds, and I sat there and had a cup of coffee with him.”  —- Richard Nixon describing his first experience in the White House Residence

“My best advice to someone sitting in this office is, don’t be too sensitive to the criticism.  I think President Johnson died of a broken heart, I really do.  Here’s Johnson, this big, strong, intelligent, tough guy, practically getting so emotional that he’d almost cry, because his critics didn’t appreciate him.  He, till the very last, thought that he might be able to win them.  And the point was, rather than have them love him, he should have tried to do what he could have done very well —- have them respect him.  And in the end he lost.  He neither gained the love nor retained the respect.”  —- Richard Nixon

RICHARD NIXON
“(Nixon is) a man of great reading, a man of great intelligence and a man of great decisiveness.”  —- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1968

“A good soldier…There is no man in the history of America who has had such careful preparation as has…Nixon for carrying out the duties of the Presidency.”  —- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I wonder how many people remember our history and realize how close Jefferson came to losing the election in 1800, and how close Aaron Burr came to being our third President, which would have been as bad electing Richard Nixon today…You don’t set a fox to watching the chickens just because he has a lot of experience in the henhouse…Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard.  He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in…(Nixon is) the easiest man to beat”  —- Harry Truman

“He is a shifty, goddamn, lying son of a bitch, and people knew it.  He’s one of the few in the history of the country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time —- and lying out of both sides.”  —- Harry Truman

“Nixon is a shifty-eyed, goddamn liar, and people know it.”  —- Harry Truman

“I don’t think the son of a bitch knows the difference between truth and lying.” —- Harry Truman

“In two hundred years of history, he’s the most dishonest President we’ve ever had.  I think he’s disgraced the Presidency.”  —- Jimmy Carter, 1974

“I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad…He’s like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards.  You’ll see —- he’ll do something wrong in the end.  He always does.”  —- Lyndon B. Johnson

“He’s a conservative…and if he became President, we could expect Republican policy would switch to the right…He is a filthy, lying son-of-a-bitch, and a very dangerous man.”  —- John F. Kennedy, 1960

“Well, I said I would not mention him unless I could praise him until he got out of the hospital, and I have not mentioned him.”  —- John F. Kennedy, in 1960 after suspending his campaign when Nixon was in the hospital for a knee injury.

“I personally think that he did violate the law, that he committed impeachable offenses.  But I don’t think that he thinks he did.”  —- Jimmy Carter, 1977

“Richard Nixon is the greatest President in foreign affairs in my lifetime.”  —- Gerald R. Ford

“I think Nixon felt I was about the only person he could really trust on the Hill…I looked upon him as my personal friend.  And I always treasured our relationship.  And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn’t want to see my real friend have the stigma.”  —- Gerald R. Ford, 2005.

“If you give me a few weeks, I may be able to think of something.” —- Dwight Eisenhower, 1960, to a reporter asking what then-Vice President Nixon had contributed to his administration.

“When I was Governor, Nixon was President, so we had Governors’ conferences at the White House and Nixon was the first President I met.  (He was easy to talk to ), but not as compatible as I am with Gerald Ford.  (Nixon) was a very smart man…a good conversationalist…a brilliant mind.”  —- Jimmy Carter

“You cannot lead a divided state.  That was my problem with Richard Nixon.  He divided the country.  The leader’s job is to unite.”  —- George W. Bush

GERALD FORD
“For myself and for our nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.”  —- Jimmy Carter, at his inauguration on January 20, 1977; and also at Ford’s burial service in Grand Rapids, Michigan, January 3, 2007

“Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t walk and fart at the same time…He’s a nice fellow but he spent too much time playing football without a helmet.”  —- Lyndon B. Johnson

“Under Messers. Kissinger and Ford this nation has become Number Two in military power in a world where it is dangerous —- if not fatal —- to be second best….All I can see is what other nations the world over see:  collapse of the American will and the retreat of American power.  There is little doubt in my mind that the Soviet Union will not stop taking advantage of détente until it sees that the American people have elected a new President and appointed a new Secretary of State.”  —- Ronald Reagan, 1976

“I think this Republican administration has been almost all style and spectacular and not substance….As far as foreign policy goes, Mr. Kissinger has been the President of this country.  Mr. Ford has shown an absence of leadership, and an absence of a grasp of what this country is and what it ought to be.”  —- Jimmy Carter, 1976

“I guess my closest friend among all the Presidents I have known is Gerald Ford.  Whenever Ford and I get together we really enjoy each other’s company.  For some reason —- you don’t know what makes you like a certain person, but I think the feeling is mutual, and Rosalynn and Betty get along quite well, so —- it’s just that, when he and I are riding somewhere together in the same limousine, we kind of hate to get there.  Because we’ve still got things to talk about.” —- Jimmy Carter

“The thing that has been the greatest misinterpretation about Gerald Ford was his bumbling.  His falling down.  He’s probably the best athlete that’s ever served in the White House.  But I have to admit that in 1976 when I prepared to run against him, I really enjoyed the stories about, you know, he couldn’t chew gum and walk at the same time, things like that.”  —- Jimmy Carter

“History has a way of matching man and moment.  And just as President Lincoln’s stubborn devoition to our Constitution kept the Union together during the Civil War, and just as FDR’s optimism was the perfect antidote to the despair of the Great Depression, so too can we say that Jerry Ford’s decency was the ideal remedy for the deception of Watergate…To know Jerry was to know a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.” —- George H. W. Bush, January 2, 2007, Eulogy to Gerald R. Ford

“President Ford represents what is best in public service, and what is best about America.” —- Bill Cilnton, August 13, 1999, upon presenting Ford with the Presidential Medal of Freedom

“Many Presidents have stayed longer, but few have left the White House with greater respect from the American people, and none ever did more to restore the dignity and credibility of the office of President than Jerry Ford.”  —- George W. Bush on Ford’s 90th Birthday

“Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency when the nation needed a leader of character and humility —- and we found it in the man from Grand Rapids.  President Ford’s time in office was brief, but history will long remember the courage and common sense that helped restore trust in the workings of our democracy.”  —- George W. Bush, January 2, 2007, Eulogy to Gerald R. Ford


JIMMY CARTER
“President Carter simply has failed to lead the nation in the direction it must go, and as a result, America is in dire jeopardy.  Our foreign policy is confused.”  —- Gerald Ford

“Jimmy Carter was a disaster, particularly domestically and economically.  I have said more than once that he was certainly the poorest President in my lifetime…He was a very decent, fine individual.  There were no major mistakes.  There just weren’t a lot of exciting results.”  —- Gerald R. Ford

“You know, that just shows that you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.” —- Gerald Ford to a member of the delegation to Anwar Sadat’s funeral after Carter unhappily agreed to a photo op aboard Air Force One with former Presidents Ford and Nixon

“Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’.  Jimmy Carter says, ‘Speak loudly and carry a flyswatter.” —- Gerald Ford during the 1976 campaign

“I have thought back over my 1976 campaign warnings that Mr. Carter was given to wobbling, weaseling, and waffling on issues all over the lot.  That he was all promise and no promise.  That he was ill-equipped and woefully innocent about Washington and the real world.  I am sorry I said those things.  I was much, much too kind.” —- Gerald Ford, October 15, 1980

“I think he’s the weakest President I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.  And he’s defending the poorest economic record of any incumbent President since the Depression.” —- Gerald Ford

“God help us.  I really mean that.” —- Gerald Ford on the possible reelection of Jimmy Carter in 1980

“He can be a real pain in the ass, but we get along.” —- Gerald Ford

“A Recession is when your neighbor loses his job.  A Depression is when you lose your job.  And Recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”  —- Ronald Reagan during the 1980 campaign against President Carter

“We must overcome something the present administration has cooked up:  a new and altogether indigestible economic stew, one part inflation, one part high unemployment, one part recession, one part runaway taxes, one part deficit spending, seasoned by an energy crisis.  It’s an economic stew that has turned the national stomach!”  —- Ronald Reagan, 1980


RONALD REAGAN
“Reagan is not one that wears well.  Reagan on a personal basis is terrible.  He just isn’t pleasant to be around.  Maybe he’s different with others.  No, he’s just an uncomfortable man to be around…strange.”  —- Richard Nixon, 1972

“He was one of the few political leaders I have ever met whose public speeches revealed more than his private communication.”  —- Gerald Ford

“Ronald Reagan was an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad.”  —- Gerald Ford

“(Reagan was) probably the least well-informed on the details of running the government of any President I knew.”  —- Gerald R. Ford

“He was not what I would (call) a technically competent President.  You know, his knowledge of the budget, his knowledge of foreign policy —- it was not up to the standards of either Democrat or Republican Presidents.  But he had a helluva flair.  He could sell himself probably better than any President since FDR and maybe JFK.  So I praise his assets, but I have reservations about his technical ability.”  —- Gerald R. Ford

“In the case of Reagan, because we’re both in California, we see each other occasionally at social events, but we make no effort to really get together.  Off the record, we have really very little in common…”  —- Gerald Ford, March 1993

“I went to see Reagan in Los Angeles eighteen months ago, in Century City.  He didn’t recognize me at all.  I must have mentioned a dozen things he and I were involved in —- our campaigns, the Sadat funeral trip, et cetera.  None of them registered…(We talked about) nothing, really.  I did most of the talking.  I spent all of my time trying to create recognition, but nothing worked.  It was very, very sad.” —- Gerald Ford, on Reagan’s deteriorating health, August 2000

“As his Vice President for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.  I learned kindness; we all did.  I also learned courage; the nation did.”  —- George H. W. Bush, Eulogy for President Reagan, June 11, 2004

“We lost Ronald Reagan only days ago, but we have missed him for a long time.  We have missed his kindly presence, that reasurring voice, and the happy ending we had wished for him.  It has been ten years since he said his own farewell; yet it is still sad and hard to let him go.  Ronald Reagan belongs to the ages now, but we preferred it when he belonged to us…And we look to that fine day when we will see him again, all weariness gone, clear of mind, strong and sure, smiling again, and the sorrow of his parting gone forever.”  —- George W. Bush, June 11, 2004, Eulogy for Ronald Reagan


GEORGE H. W. BUSH
“George Bush is a man of action —- a man accustomed to command.  The Vice Presidency doesn’t fit easily on such a man.  But George Bush is a patriot.  And so he made it fit, and he served with a distinction no one has ever matched.”  —- Ronald Reagan, 1988

“George Bush united the country for Desert Storm.  Desert Storm is gonna be his legacy.  Not only he united the country, but the amazing feat was, he united the WORLD!  But, I understand short-term history is never objective”.  —- George W. Bush, 1998

BILL CLINTON
“I get confused by him.  I don’t know what’s at his core.  I don’t know what’s most important to him.  But this guy is the best politician I’ve ever seen…He’ll always have a blemish on the grounds of character, but on the other hand, you have to admit he’s a hardworking, articulate, bright person who has done his darnedest to build up an image.  But you can’t erase character problems.”  —- Gerald R. Ford, 2000

“John was great, but all John had was the press.  He was still an elitist; he didn’t like the rope line.  This guy loves the rope line —- and the rope line loves him.”  —- Gerald Ford, on the differences between JFK and Clinton

“Well, he’s a nicer person than I thought.  I think he’s a nice person.  He’s very persuasive.  He’s a helluva PR guy.  He’s a typical Chautauqua salesman who moves in, seduces everybody, and then starts to compromise his position based on the pressures that he gets politically and otherwise.  He doesn’t think it’s wrong; he enjoys the process.”  —- Gerald Ford

“I’ll tell you one thing:  he didn’t miss one good-looking skirt at any of the social occasions.  He’s got a wandering eye, I’ll tell you that.  Betty had the same impression; he isn’t very subtle about his interest…He’s got his eyes wandering all the time….He’s attractive and he’s persuasive, obviously.”  —- Gerald Ford on Clinton’s womanizing

“He believes everything he says.  Under any circumstances, at any time, and he’s sincere about that.  He just has a very facile mind.”  —- Gerald Ford on Clinton’s dissembling

“Nobody’s come to me.  It’s not my style to interject myself, and as a result I’ve said absolutely nothing.  Jimmy Carter hasn’t done it, I don’t intend to do it, Ronald Reagan can’t, and George Bush to my knowledge has not.  I think it’s wise for the three of us, and Ron Reagan if he were able, to just stay totally out of it.  It’s a damn shame; it’s undercutting the image of the Presidency.” —- Gerald Ford on former Presidents involving themselves in the impeachment proceedings against Clinton

“Betty and I have talked about this a lot.  He’s sick —- he’s got an addiction.  He needs treatment.  He’s sick…I’m convinced that Clinton has a sexual addiction.  He needs to get help —- for his sake.  He’s already damaged his Presidency beyond repair.” —- Gerald Ford, January 1999

“The media helped Clinton get elected.” —- Gerald Ford, 1993

“The President’s got an addiction, and it affects his judgment.” —- Gerald Ford, on Cinton’s sexual indiscretions, 1998

“The truth is, he’s a very talented guy, but he has no convictions —- none whatsoever.”  —- Gerald Ford, 2001

“Democrats have made a wise choice this year that can bring the needed change…This year he has endured —- and survived —- the false and misleading political attacks on his character.  He is a man of honesty and integrity.” —- Jimmy Carter, July 15, 1992

“He would unite the Presidency and the Congress to achieve one end above all others —- more government.  A government that taxes more, spends more, regulates more, encourages more lawsuits and shuts off more products from the markets that Americans create.”  —- George H. W. Bush, September 18, 1992

“My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos.”  —- George H. W. Bush, 1992, on Clinton and his Vice Presidential running mate, Al Gore.

“Now I understand why he’s inside looking out and I’m outside looking in.” —- George H.W. Bush, after speaking at an event with Clinton (who beat him in the 1992 election) in 1995

GEORGE W. BUSH
“I’m asked often, does the President have a tougher job in the current circumstances than you had, or Reagan had, or Carter had?  And my answer is yes.  President Bush has a much more difficult job.  When Reagan and Carter and I and Johnson were in office, it was a challenge between the Soviet Union and the United States, their allies and our allies.  When we negotiated, we understood what the problems were….And it was a much more responsible negotiation, even thought the weapons were scary.  President Bush has to deal with a worldwide, multifaceted problem, and that makes it much more complicated, and I say much more dangerous.”  —- Gerald Ford, 2004

“I think as far as the adverse impace on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.”  —- Jimmy Carter, May 2007

BARACK OBAMA
“I talked to him right after the election and…assured him that he was my President.  I’ve been very impressed with his style on the campaign and his coolness and articulate nature.  I think he can give a sentence and it’ll sound like it’s been thought out by Shakespeare or something.”  —- George H.W. Bush, January 3, 2009.

JEFFERSON DAVIS  (Confederate President)
“When I look at his gallant services, finding him first in the military school of the United States, educated…at the expense of his country —- taught to love the principles of the Constitution; afterwards entering its service fighting beneath the Stars and Stripes…I cannot understand how he can be willing to hail another banner, and turn from that of his country; …if I could not unsheathe my sword in vindication of the flag of my country…I would return the sword to its scabbard; I would never sheathe it in the bosom of my mother; never!  Never!  Never!”  —- Andrew Johnson

LBJ: Speech at Gettysburg, 1963

Speech at Gettysburg by Vice President Lyndon Johnson
May 30, 1963, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

On this hallowed ground, heroic deeds were performed and eloquent words were spoken a century ago.

We, the living, have not forgotten—and the world will never forget—the deeds or the words of Gettysburg. We honor them now as we join on this Memorial Day of 1963 in a prayer for permanent peace of the world and fulfillment of our hopes for universal freedom and justice.

We are called to honor our own words of reverent prayer with resolution in the deeds we must perform to preserve peace and the hope of freedom.

We keep a vigil of peace around the world.

Until the world knows no aggressors, until the arms of tyranny have been laid down, until freedom has risen up in every land, we shall maintain our vigil to make sure our sons who died on foreign fields shall not have died in vain.

As we maintain the vigil of peace, we must remember that justice is a vigil, too—a vigil we must keep in our own streets and schools and among the lives of all our people—so that those who died here on their native soil shall not have died in vain.

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed.

One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.

The Negro today asks justice.

We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we reply to the Negro by asking, “Patience.”

It is empty to plead that the solution to the dilemmas of the present rests on the hands of the clock. The solution is in our hands. Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans—white and Negro together—must be about the business of resolving the challenge which confronts us now.

Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.

To ask for patience from the Negro is to ask him to give more of what he has already given enough. But to fail to ask of him—and of all Americans—perseverance within the processes of a free and responsible society would be to fail to ask what the national interest requires of all its citizens.

The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed—and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves.

If the white over-estimates what he has done for the Negro without the law, the Negro may under-estimate what he is doing and can do for himself with the law.

If it is empty to ask Negro or white for patience, it is not empty—it is merely honest—to ask perseverance. Men may build barricades—and others may hurl themselves against those barricades—but what would happen at the barricades would yield no answers. The answers will only be wrought by our perseverance together. It is deceit to promise more as it would be cowardice to demand less.

In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake—it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision.

The Negro says, “Now.” Others say, “Never.” The voice of responsible Americans—the voice of those who died here and the great man who spoke here—their voices say, “Together.” There is no other way.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.