MICHAEL BESCHLOSS

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.

Then you get to the last half of the 20th century, Americans are getting very skeptical about their leaders and their institutions, and another place that is affected is parties and conventions.

From the beginning of the presidential nominating conventions in the 1830's really through the 1950's, you had conventions that actually did real business.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.

The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.

Oftentimes during the period in which conventions really did business, you had situations where the delegates were divided and you would have ballot after ballot before there was a final nominee.

You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.

As parties began to develop around the turn of the 19th century, you had party nominees for President nominated in caucuses made up of party members in Congress.

Getting members of Congress to do things they don’t want to do is a crucial part of being President.

[In wartime] there is almost always an overstretch [for power] by the President.

No war is exactly like another.

One test of leaders is how they make sure that their ideas and programs will live on after they’re gone.

Nixon’s wife was featured at the nominating convention. They were trying to give Nixon a little bit of humanity which was a very difficult thing to do.

One test of a great work of history is does it make you feel like you have lived through the period

We liked to think that polling and political analysis had become scientific, but this campaign changes all that.

There is a great overlap of tragedy that played out through the generations of the Lincolns. That, coupled with the idea that many people consider Lincoln our greatest president ever and the fact that he was also a man assassinated at the age of 56 and had a widow with mental problems is what makes it all so fascinating.

Presidents fall into second-term slumps for different reasons.

Whether history will view Ronald Reagan as a great president depends, more than anything else, on one question: how much credit does he deserve for the fact that the Cold War ended far earlier than almost anyone suspected - and on terms that Americans had fantasized about for 45 years?

Mrs. Johnson was one of our most important First Ladies. Quietly but firmly, she advised LBJ on rhetoric, strategy, and personal relations and helped to dampen his volatile mood swings.

Kissinger's monopoly on this historical record has driven many scholars to distraction. Groups of lawyers, scholars, journalists and archivists have used pronunciamento, lawsuit, and other crowbars in a usually vain effort to open Kissinger's Library of Congress cache.

Too few presidents have steeped themselves not just in Lincoln's words but his deeds, which is why Obama's acquaintance with the great man is so compelling - especially since, like President-elect Lincoln, Obama will take office at a perilous time.

Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan each suffered through his second four years. FDR was checkmated by Congress and the Supreme Court. Ike was dogged by Sputnik and reckless charges that the United States suffered from a Missile Gap. Reagan had to wend his way through Iran-Contra.