Yesterday the President had one of his busiest days. …. The corridor outside his study has been filled with gentlemen all day long. I often wonder how it is possible to adjust to so many different people and their interests in the course of a day, but after all that is one of the things every President must learn to do.
The presidency is a place that is hemmed with all sorts of constraints and limitations. I don't think the American people quite know that the presidency is really a juggling act of competing pressures.
It is hard for people outside the White House to understand the constant daily problems and issues that come up that require the president's attention, but he can not let himself get too personally involved.
In any country, governance issues are there. Challenges are there, pressures are there. When multi-party coalitions take decisions, sometimes delays will be there. But that is what democracy is: it is beauty or it's challenge.
The important thing to understand about legislators is that there are dozens of competing interests and issues that occupy them. They are stretched thin.
Leaders get things wrong. Of course they do. They have imperfect information. They face competing political pressures. Ultimately they are human.
There's just something about this job as president every president faces, you know, that you think one thing going in and then the pressures of the job or the realities of the world, you know, are different than you thought.
At times I wonder whether or not your role as a member of Parliament... may in fact inhibit a relationship developing.
Work continuously to trim the White House staff from your first day to your last. All the pressures are to the contrary.
[On whether she would want daughter Tricia to marry a politician:] I would feel sorry for her if she did.
I had no inkling of how crazy the political life would turn out to be. You shuttle between your constituency and Ottawa, you try to make every barbecue, festival, parade and charity run, but sometimes you feel pulled in 14 directions at once.
It was very constraining, much more than I ever would have thought, to run for governor.
Spending programs always and immediately create powerful political pressures to maintain and expand them generated by those who are the direct beneficiaries.
