Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
Few American presidents have been unhappier or lonelier in office than Woodrow Wilson.
I have the highest respect for Obama. I have worked with 10 American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats. As far as Israeli security is concerned, he has done the most that an American president can do.
George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower all rode their wartime heroics into the White House.
Securing freedom has been a singular commitment of American presidents and patriots in and out of government for generations. But its perpetual continuation is not guaranteed.
From John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, presidents have rhetorically opened the door to the frontier for us, and each time, we have turned away to fight over destinations, technologies, and timing.
FDR used to say, 'You and I are the two best actors in America'.
Futurism is another American myth: whether Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan or Obama, American presidents all come into office with a new program, and the conviction that the country is going to be better than ever.
To give credit to Lincoln for moral progression seems beyond the facts and unnecessary for our appreciation of this arguably greatest of all American presidents.
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn't have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men.
Fighting back against Iran is difficult and costly. No American president from Carter to Obama has been willing to take it on.
George W. Bush is the first Catholic president of the United States.
Washington and Lincoln mean as much to us as any two men could mean to a civilization, a people, and age, but I told Mr. Coolidge when he dedicated this monument that this rock is being carved with a monument that will outlive our government.
Sitting in the Oval Office, beneath a painting of George Washington, with a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. over his right shoulder and a bust of Abraham Lincoln over his left shoulder, Obama told 'National Journal' that the country's economic woes are deep and endemic.
One out of forty American men wears women's clothing. We've had more than forty presidents. One of these guys has been dancing around the Oval Office in a prom dress.
Successive American presidents have turned a blind eye to piles of evidence that Saudi money is being used to foment holy war against America.
Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan - and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.
My mom was a history teacher, so I couldn't really avoid history when I was growing up. But we're very light on American history. We don't really have great opportunities to study both the Civil War and the Revolution.
In my opinion, assassination theories will continue to revolve around these assassinations as they have around several other significant assassinations in American history. The assassination of President Lincoln comes to mind.
My thinking is Lincolnian rather than Jeffersonian, Teddy Rooseveltian rather than Franklin D. Rooseveltian.
Nixon is fascinating because he's our most alienated president. Everybody felt that they never knew who he was - that's palpable in the histories. His face is so cartoony that he's become this cartoon figure. I never really related to the romanticization of J.F.K., and I knew too much about Reagan to idealize him. Nixon falls in between.
Trump knows that he is encountering a complete lack of understanding in Europe, but it's apparent that he's not very impressed by it. My experience, however, has been that American presidents take a greater interest in Europe over the course of their term.
Three American presidents-Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson-have asked the question: What do we get from aiding Pakistan? Five-Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama-have wondered aloud whether Pakistan's leaders can be trusted to keep their word.
Traditionally Presidents Day was Washington's birthday. It was celebrated as a public holiday on February 22 each year, in peace or in war.
