Eric Alterman Quotes
Certainly there are worse sins than doing everything possible to make your presidency matter.
Alterman, Eric. When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences. Viking, 2004.
Describing Texas Senator Robert Kruger who had been appointed to Bestsen's seat and was having trouble getting elected in his own right. Kruger lost his bid for election.
The secretary was urged to resign because President Truman had decided against him on a major policy issue. The only soldier ever so honored
Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Clinton
Roosevelt was such a breath of fresh air as a politician that cynical political journalists saw him as almost a savior of American politics at the time. His dynamic personality, independence from outside influence, and his enthusiasm for reforming the out of control corporate dominated society without destroying the corporations like Bryan and the populists, attracted many who had never before supported any politician.
This quotation perhaps was the most critical in Roosevelt’s political career. After winning the presidential election in his own right, that evening at a press conference he called, he not only committed to serving only two terms—then a custom and not law as it would be after WWII—but he also committed that his first three and a half years where he was not elected but assumed the presidency upon McKinley’s assassination would count as a full elected term. He therefore in 1908 could not run again even though the public wanted him to, and he might have liked another term. More important historically was 1912. Roosevelt had chosen his close friend and colleague William Howard Taft to succeed him and with Roosevelt’s support he was elected in 1908. But Taft’s wife who had always been his closest political advisor and reviewer of all his policies and speeches, had a stroke shortly after Taft was elected. Taft’s performance as President was very disappointing to Roosevelt, and he ran against Taft in the 1912 Republican nominating campaign. The very conservative Republicans were against Roosevelt, but many of those who liked him were distressed that he was reneging on his pledge not to run for a 3rd term. Roosevelt lost, and famously started the Bull Moose Party and ran against Taft and Wilson. He outpolled Taft but with the split Republican vote, Woodrow Wilson won the Presidency. This pledge haunted Roosevelt for the rest of his life.
The amendment was pushed by the Republicans in reaction to FDR's four terms, but its practical effect was to limit presidents Eisenhower and Reagan, both Republicans, to 2 terms while they each could have won a third term. Roosevelt had won 4 terms and traumatized the Republicans prompting them to term limit the American Presidency.
America’s first political economist. This is a wonderful quotation which shows the compromises that even a great president like Abraham Lincoln had to act when Congress passed must have bills.
Eric Alterman is an American historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger and educator. He is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College and the author of eleven books. From 1995 to 2020, Alterman was "The Liberal Media" columnist for The Nation. He is now a contributing writer there, and at The American Prospect where he writes the "Altercation" newsletter.
