Robert Dallek Quotes
Every candidate for the Presidency should read books that strike cautionary notes about how recent leaders miscalculated or allowed themselves to be led astray by false beliefs.
Robert Dallek, Historian, The Lost Peace: Leadership in a time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Actually, there are many in politics who to this day castigate Truman for his decision, but for Bloomberg’s generation and before, anyone would have pushed the button. And there are some who still fault Obama as technically, the U. S. had no right to violate Pakistani airspace and kill a resident of their state without any due process in the U. S. or Pakistan. Bloomberg would have easily pushed that button, but there are many officials who warned against it, and earlier Presidents—George W. Bush and Bill Clinton who did not authorize assassinations in foreign (allies) countries.
Defending himself against the charge that he had fathered an illegitimate child:
The Senator was blaming President Clinton for not stopping the attack on the U. S. Cole as he knew that there were hostile Islamic extremists who were known to have threatened to attack American assets wherever they were. His view was that given that President Clinton should have acted overtly and/or covertly to prevent the attack. This failure for him was an impeachable offence. He argued that George W. Bush was assuming the Presidency and this laxness and incompetence that lead to the death of 17 American sailors would end. And then came 9-11 with the same level of general information and some even more specific information and 3000 Americans were killed. However, unlike Lott, almost no one blamed President Bush’s lack of leadership for the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Lott seemed to forget his standard of presidential performance and did not criticize or urge the impeachment of the President of his own party.
Robert A. Dallek is an American historian specializing in the presidents of the United States, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He retired as a history professor at Boston University in 2004 and previously taught at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Oxford University. He won the Bancroft Prize for his 1979 book Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 as well as other awards for scholarship and teaching.
