Bob Dole Quotes
I really thought, with my background growing up, and my service, and all that, I thought it would be enough for the presidency. But... It sure was enough when I ran for Congress.
Dole, Bob. Quoted in Bob Dole: The Republicans' Champion, by Ralph G. Martin, Simon & Schuster, 1997, p. 301.
In response to a newspaper editor who told Jackson some of his friends advocated him for the Presidency:
Ironically, according to Plato and other political philosophers, one of the important qualifications for a leader is that he doesn’t believe that he is ready at the moment. In that sense Christie burnished his star. However, few politicians ever express any public doubt regarding their experience and qualifications.
Also attributed earlier to Thomas Corwin. See under "Memorials"
He had asked Acheson to be Secretary of State and Acheson told the President that he did not feel qualified to do the job. Acheson then accepted.
This quotation illustrates an interesting phenomenon in American Presidential Politics. There have been Democratic Presidents (FDR and Obama are the most glaring examples) for whom there was vituperative hatred and derision from the conservative Republicans who would frequently refer to them as Socialists and would believe that they were trying to lead the country on the path to socialism. The Presidents always stated that they were opposed to socialism, but to little avail with their conservative haters. But the socialists of the times and even the left wing of the Democratic Party not only did not see them as socialists, but were not very supportive or complementary of their skills and capabilities. Roosevelt reveled in the situation and “welcomed: their hate. Obama was more of a public centrist who tried to avoid the president getting involved in the extreme partisanship of the day.
Robert Joseph Dole is an American politician and attorney who represented Kansas in the U.S. Senate from 1969 to 1996. He was the Republican Leader of the United States Senate during the final 11 years of his tenure, including three nonconsecutive years as Senate Majority Leader. Prior to his 27 years in the Senate, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1969. Dole was also the Republican presidential nominee in the 1996 election and the vice presidential nominee in the 1976 election.
