Michael Armacost Quotes
All administrations benefit from the in and outers.
Michael Armacost, U.S. Under Secretary of State, President, The Brookings Institution, Speech, Brookings Institution, April 6, 1999
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Reacting to criticism that political appointees were being given civil service jobs toward the end of an administration:
a posh upper-class private club joined by most Conservative politicians
Explaining why he did not accept the Vice Presidential nomination of his party:
This memo was sent before he was nominated as a Supreme Court Justice. The Senate did not know of this memo at the time he was ratified otherwise he might not have been. Powell saw every serious critic of the American Economy or the existing government policies as “attacking” the American Free Enterprise System. Surprisingly, he thought that business executives were rather helpless when it came to supporting the status quo.
The object was to be able to use the IRS records to obtain information about their "enemies" to either intimidate them by threating to make embarrassing information public if their behavior did not change, or releasing the information and impairing the critic's credibility—all of which were and are crimes.
Nixon was a natural target for attacks and insults. At his best he was never a sympathetic or lovable figure, and at his worst his weaknesses and moral handicaps were fodder for most writers and other public figures. In this quotation collection there are many more insults targeting Richard M. Nixon than any other politician—no one has come close since.
The Governor, Grey Davis, was generally very unpopular with even members of his own party. The Governor was facing a recall petition where one outcome was that Bustamante would get position. However, Bustamonte and other Democrats were officially opposed to and campaigning against the recall. The Governor, never very friendly with them, was particularly suspicious of all his “supporters.” Bustamante’s diplomatic response was in response to a question from the press as to how his relationship with the Governor was holding up.
Diem appointed his relatives and cronies to his cabinet and other key political positions, and allowed the legislature to meet infrequently thereby having his family control the country.
Referring to President Bush's winning a roll-call vote in the House on lowering the capital gains tax:
Before assuming the presidency in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife called on President and Mrs. Hoover in the White House. Social custom required that the call be returned, but Roosevelt told the outgoing President, "I realize, Mr. President, that you are extremely busy, so I will understand if you do not return the call." Hoover responded:
Michael Hayden Armacost is a retired American diplomat and a fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute. He was the president of the Brookings Institution from 1995 to 2002.
