Jim Talent Quotes

You shut the door, you tell the boss exactly what you think. But when the door opens, the job of the vice president is to stand right next to the president and implement the policy that he's decided. And I'm prepared to do that.

The wound-tight, travel-light Obama has a distaste for the adversarial and the random. But if you stick too rigidly to a 'No Drama' rule in the White House, you risk keeping reality at bay. Presidencies are always about crisis management.

War is often about making the least-worst decision. The same could be said about politics. But the stakes are higher in war, when the commander-in-chief is called upon to defend the nation.

I am someone who facilitates the President’s ability to make tough decisions.

[Describing her role:] It's like running a big corporation and a little country at the same time.

Part of your job as President is not only to make the tough calls, but to get people to agree with you.

The President has full responsibility, which cannot be shared, for military decisions in a world in which the difference between safety and cataclysm can be a matter of hours or even minutes.

I work with the president and speak with him multiple times a week. This is a man, he didn't become the president by accident. And as much as everyone wants to talk about stability, was he unstable when he passed the tax reform? Was he unstable when we finally hit back at Syria and said no more chemical weapons?

Being a Navy SEAL and sniper taught me all about risk management. Take away all the risk variables under your control and reduce it to an acceptable level. The same fundamentals apply in business.

Commanders-in-chief make really tough decisions.

I believe that the president's (Bush) leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers.

I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.'

The important thing is that we recognize our President's leadership, that he is not saying: I am going to walk away from this. He is saying: I am going to do the right thing.

If I had undertaken the practical direction of military operations, and anything went amiss, I feared that my conscience would torture me, as guilty of the fall of my country, as I had not been familiar with military tactics.

Fortunately, President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.

Had Rumsfeld said at any time 'get me a report on what's going on', he could have had it. You're right, it depends on choices that we make, which parts of the world we want to be in immediate contact with.

Any team that has Shade as their leader is bound to have a pretty directionless quality. But when Cyborg asks Shade to gather the Secret Seven together and help him stop the war between Wonder Woman and Aquaman, Shade agrees - albeit reluctantly.

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

Successful organizations, including the Military, have learned that the higher the risk, the more necessary it is to engage everyone's commitment and intelligence.

People (political and military leaders) much prefer to speak of what they are going to do rather than what the outcome will be.

One mediocre general is better than two good ones.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

As Secretary of Defense I have to be cautious and prudent.

I’ve worked as a leader for many years and I’ve always trained myself to be prepared for the worst.

If the President had his wife’s will and would use it rightly, our affairs would look much better.