leadership image Quotes

It is so important – the setting in which the President is presented to the world.

Some issues are just too important to be left to an unscripted Joe Biden.

There are a lot of Civil War photographs of men in stove-pipe hats. But none of them looked like Abraham Lincoln …. Ulysses S. Grant did not wear an officer’s uniform blouse. He wore an enlisted man’s blouse with general’s stars—even when he was the highest ranking officer in the army…. Until he became a Senator, [J. F.] Kennedy dressed like a college student. After he entered the Senate he always wore elegant suits.

Although no one explicitly wants a president who could have a reliable fall back career in stand-up comedy, everyone shudders at the thought of a Rutherford B. Hayes or John Kerry.

Henry Kissinger may have wished I had presented him as a combination of Charles DeGaulle and Disraeli, but I didn't....out of respect for DeGaulle and Disraeli. I described him as a cowboy because that is how he describes himself. If I were a cowboy I would be offended.

Leaders should never, ever try to look cool - that's for dictators

I've written before that the president is our national avatar - a stand-in for what we believe we are, or want to be.

Prince Charles has doomed himself by so clearly wanting to be thought clever and cultured: the clever, cultured people don't buy it, and the people don't want a clever, cultured ruler.

Presidents don't have power. Their job is to draw attention away from it.

I stand by this man (President George W. Bush). I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound.. with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

Finally [Indira Ganhi] called a beautiful dark little boy who was playing on the lawn, and embracing him tenderly, murmured, 'This is my grandchild; this is the man I love most in the world.' It was a strange sensation to watch this very powerful woman embracing a child.

Notoriously outspoken, his sentences always punctuated with profanities, General George S. Patton was the epitome of what a leader should be like - or so he thought. Patton believed a leader should look and act tough, so he cultivated his image and his personality to match his philosophy.

From where you sit, the White House may look as untidy as the inside of a stomach. As is said of the legislative process, sausage-making and policy-making shouldn't be seen close-up. Don't let that panic you. Things may be going better than they look from the inside.

Ronald Reagan would never go into the Oval Office without his jacket on - that's how much he revered the presidency.

Unless you're Barack Obama, you cannot pull off an impromptu a capella rendition of a heart-warming song in the middle of a speech.

I'm the front man, I'm the man on camera, but there's a whole team beyond me.

Gandhi and Mandela and Churchill and JFK and Reagan and Thatcher and Sarkozy and Franklin and Washington set the tone to an incredible degree-their "personal style" was their "brand." ("It" starts with personal style of the tip-top leadership team. Sorry to be politically insensitive, but who would give a hoot about Tibet if it weren't for the look and style of the Dalai Lama?) Boss at any level: You're either on the "it" boat-or not.

How, then, has Obama been saddled with an image of being long on inspiration and short on details? The answer is that journalists are not accustomed to covering a candidate who moves crowds the way Obama does, who uses speech cadences and rhythm like Martin Luther King Jr. without making his talk explicitly about race. Sen. Clinton already owned the policy-wonk slot, so by default, Obama was cast as the poetic one.

Far from being reluctantly propelled into hostilities by popular war fever, leaders incite that fever in order to gather support for their war policies. Thereby do they attempt to distract the public from pressing domestic matters, serve the overseas interests of U.S. investors, justify gargantuan military budgets, and present themselves as great leaders.

Kim Jong Un shaved his eyebrows and got his hair sticking right up. How would you like the leader of your country looking like Lady Gaga? Even Dennis Rodman told him he looks weird.

People would say you look weak if you're not cursing the opposition and driving around in a big black car while always wearing a tie. Above all, to be 'strong' you're always supposed to be giving orders.

The Führer is always quite cheerful, cheerful with all his heart, when he is having tea with his friends during the night, or when he is training his dogs!

I'm sometimes described as a flamboyant leader and a hip-shooter, a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants operator. But if that were true, I could never have been successful in this business.

Jimmy Carter used to walk off the airplane carrying his own luggage. Do you remember that? I don't want my president carrying - I want the freaking Marines to be carrying his luggage, and they want to carry his luggage.

There's no doubt that usually a president's public image is enhanced by going to war. That never did appeal to me.