David Ignatius Quotes

Given the daunting challenges that we face, it's important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.

His Presidency gave his post-Presidency credibility.

President [William Howard] Taft is an amiable man, completely surrounded by men who know exactly what they want.

This will last, Mr. President, as long as you are President and beyond.

Giving Obama credit for killing Bin Laden is Ike giving Harry Truman credit for dropping the [atomic] bomb: any president would’ve pushed that button.

A President has a character, and the whole administration takes its character from the President's.

For better or worse, a critical factor in high level policy making is the President as a human being. Crudely put, there’s no right or wrong way; there’s the President’s way.

Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong.

Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.

The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.

I love Obama's calm and dignity. A lot of people confuse that with being aloof, but I know people that have held that job. It's a 24-hour barrage of information.

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

American presidential leadership never goes out of style.

A man who understands the power of the Presidency, who understands the potential of the Presidency, can get almost anything accomplished.

Never underestimate the power of an American President in his early days.

He [President George W. Bush] really doesn’t want a lot of advice from me.

A president, however, must stand somewhat apart, as all great presidents have known instinctively. Then the language which has the power to survive its own utterance is the most likely to move those to whom it is immediately spoken.

Historians will eventually sort out the good and bad of each administration.

Any man who has ever been honored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the American people.

The nature of the Presidency is such that you are always asking yourself what else could you be doing?.

The actions of our president systematically provide both the legal and political justifications for similar initiatives undertaken by later presidents.

Presidents live and work in a house of history. They dwell with ghosts. Present power and the weight of the past are ambient realities of daily life in the presidency, and the two are intimately connected.

Obama isn't just too big to fail. He's too big to know. Obama is so vital to the country and to the world, he must be kept out of the loop in order to save him from his failed presidency.

I don't know if history will adjudge Barack Obama a great president, but he has been a necessary one.