George B. Christian Jr. Quotes

Every President does it. It goes back to George Washington. I can’t say that past Administrations have asked the same questions, but the end result is the same—you put people on boards that you want.

Isn’t that a sweetheart deal. The Attorney General is appointed by the President; then investigates the President.

I was only one-half the appointing power. I nominated, but the Senate confirmed.

The greatest beggar and the most troublesome of all the office seekers during my Administration was General Harrison.

Whenever I form a ministry, the Carleton Club was like the Zoological Gardens at feeding time.

When you buy a Presidential candidate, you buy his party and you buy 20,000 appointees you never heard of.

It is a handicap to any man to succeed a member of his own party as President. He has little patronage with which to reward his personal supporters.

The only way a President-elect is ever going to get the sort of cabinet he himself wants is to shoot out his list right at the beginning, consulting nobody and sticking to his first selections. The minute he begins asking advice he is in trouble.

The great defect in the past custom is that executive patronage has come to be regarded as the property of the party in power.

Unfortunately it has come to pass that we choose our Presidents because of their vote-getting qualities in certain doubtful states rather than for their qualifications for the office they are to fill.

As for the like of Hillary Clinton, I - you know, I've covered Secretary of State Clinton before. I covered her during her campaign. And she's a very likable and charismatic person once you get the chance to spend any time close to her.

You got to have people at the top who respond to and are selected by presidents.

'Favoritism' is always a factor, and pressure always build for the appointment of friends of influential supporters of the President, or for the nominees of powerful Member of Congress from the incoming President's party.

The executive power is better to be trusted when it has no screen. Sir, we have a responsibility in the person of our President; he cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person the weight of his criminality; no appointment can take place without his nomination; and he is responsible for every nomination he makes…. Add to all this, that officer is placed high, and is possessed of power far from being contemptible, yet not a single privilege is annexed to his character; far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment

The success of any executive measure must now be bought by the use of political patronage in influencing the action of legislators.

No man who ever held the office of President would congratulate a friend on obtaining it. He will make one man ungrateful, and a hundred men his enemies, for every office he can bestow.

Bureaucracy is widespread in the unemployed movement.... There is direct appointment and removals of Unemployed Council functionaries by the Party committees. These functionaries are responsible not to the masses but to the Party committees.

All administrations benefit from the in and outers.

For 22 years [as a Senator] I worried about all the power at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now [as Treasury Secretary] I worry about all the power at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage. It takes them a long time to become acquainted with the Federal office-holders and the Federal Government.

There's no way you can depend on the Attorney General of the United States to investigate high government officials.

Mr. Roosevelt, when you are in Washington as long as I have been, you will learn that the President of the United States calls on nobody.

Presidents ought to get the appointments they want for the cabinet and then be responsible for them.

The President is responsible to the public for the conduct of the person he has nominated and appointed.

As Chairman of the [House] Ways and Means Committee, I can contact the President whoever he may be, quite readily on the telephone. As a Vice President, I don't know whether he'd listen to me or not.