Nancy Gibbs Quotes

Every president makes the Oval Office theirs.

We need a presidency which acts and protects us.

American presidential leadership never goes out of style.

If Mr. Obama wants to get things done, he must recognize that in Washington only the president has the power to make the first big move.

Every president of the United States federalizes his values.

The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.

Let the Executive [the President] also be for life.

Most Americans look upon the President as superior to the Congress and the Supreme Court, about whose powers and functions they know very little;

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

The King had no independent authority to wage or declare war, to negotiate or ratify treaties. By assigning a substantial share of these responsibilities to a single executive outside the legislature, the architects of the Presidency created an office far more powerful than the British Monarchy at that time.

Being president does seem a lot more stressful than being vice president.

You know, the bully pulpit that the president has is pretty significant. And I think that one of the things this I've learned in my two and a half years in Congress is the American people want to see us transcend party label and transcend D and R and actually get things done, deliver to the American people, and I think if we were focused on that, we would be seeing a lot more folks happy with what's going on in Washington, D.C.

It's often said of American politics that it's a huge juggernaut and the president can change the direction by two or three degrees in either direction, but not much more. In fact, I think the president's power is limited, much more than the prime minister in England.

I'm not impressed with presidents. I have met a few, but I'm not impressed with them.

If we have a Democratic Senate I think the Republican Party will wake up to the reality that their opposition to comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship is a losing proposition. That Donald Trump's inflammatory rhetoric and derogatory comments do not really work in a national election. And I think we'll have a better chance to actually get something done.

We're in a mess in America, and it's because of what you think. We're in a mess because of your party. We're in a mess, Mrs. Clinton, because you've been there. You were responsible for this economy. You're responsible our foreign policy. You're responsible for the massive illegal immigration.

Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.

I think where I get frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it.

I think [Donald Trump] does understand that. We talked a great deal about the separation on power and the constitution. And we're very excited about what he's doing because what he's doing is pulling back what we see as unconstitutional executive actions from the past presidents.

I don't think the Republican Party, or I should say the Republican Party as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump.

Republicans define freedom as an absence of restraints imposed by government. Democrats define freedom as an absence of necessity, which government exists to reduce. America has not moved as far as it thinks it has beyond the argument about the New Deal, when FDR insisted, "Necessitous men are not free men."

I think what the American people want more than anything else is a strong and decisive leader.

However, there will be a Republican Party platform that will coalesce around their convention. Unless I miss my guess, it will be considerably more conservative on these issues, perhaps even than Governor Romney is, and I think that that will give Americans a clear set of choices about all issues, but about women's issues too.

I would caution my Republican friends that [Obama has] three years to go, and in that three years the American people are going to want to see some progress and not just claims that this guy is out of office and we're going to do everything to destroy him or that somehow he is a 'socialist' taking over the country. Have we so lost our faith in this country that we think one person, one man can be can suddenly change our entire system? That's kind of absurd.

Conservative values aren't really reflected in the radical values of the NRA. And the other idea was that the NRA is not what you think it is: It's an evolving, ever-changing organization, and it has not always been this radical, right-wing arm of the Republican Party, and that the history of the NRA is in fact really interesting.