Robert Dallek Quotes

The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasn't an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.

... what's in a person's heart and soul will not likely be changed by the ability to command a helicopter to land on the South Lawn.

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

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

Presidents by six years have been there long enough for the media and the country to see their flaws.

It is very difficult for [people] to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy.

The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.

JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.

Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time.

Public scandals are America's favorite parlor sport. Learning about the flaws and misdeeds of the rich and famous seems to satisfy our egalitarian yearnings.

Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?

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

John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems... spastic colitis.

Concealing one's true medical condition from the voting public is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency.