Presidential Limitations Quotes

The 22nd Amendment limiting a president to two terms is an act of retroactive vindictiveness rather than judicious thinking about the institutions of the republic.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Our founders thought long and hard about what the office of president should be. George Washington resisted the role, and then defined it.

The presidency is an office for which none of us is great enough.

The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency.

The President is not a God, not a miracle worker. He is a citizen.

Obama must scrutinize and disassemble the post-Sept. 11 imperial presidency, even if he reduces his own power in the process.

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.

I think where I get frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it.

It's hard to say what the Founding Fathers would think of the modern presidency.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

The shelf life of a seventh-year State of the Union address is about five minutes. Presidents can propose stuff. They're probably not likely to get it done.

The authority of Congress must be respected …. The President must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws.

If you want to change a law, you have to pass a law. Presidents don't write laws. Congress writes laws.

All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues.

Control is not a luxury that most Presidents are allowed.

Remember, it is not about voting for the perfect candidate - there is no such thing. Presidents are human.

A president just can't make much showing against congress. They lay awake nights, thinking up things to be against the president on.

As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes. I cannot see you.

I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have the sense to do without my persuading them. That's all the powers of the President amount to.

A president cannot make decision on what someone might know in the future.

The presidency is worse than being in jail.

If Barack Obama now, or some black person in the future, should become president, neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton would be out of a job. A black president can't end black misery; a black president can't be a civil rights leader or primarily a crusader for racial justice.

If we had complete knowledge, you wouldn't need any intelligence gathering whatsoever. The president isn't god. We do have intelligence gathering.