George T. Conway III Quotes

Whose leadership, whose judgment, whose values do you want in the White House when that crisis lands like a thud on the Oval Office desk?

A President in a ... crisis makes, say, 10 bets a day. Maybe I made the wrong choice three times.

Very few presidents create their own greatness. Greatness is thrust upon them by a crisis.

When you're a leader at any level of any scale, leaders are defined at times of crisis.

One right decision doth not a great president make.

We need leadership, and we need it now.

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.

I think George W. Bush has a warm, engaging personality. But, you know, the presidency is more than just a popularity contest.

Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt faced adversities that, in their times, seemed impregnable. Great presidents overcome great odds.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you're held responsible for everything, but you don't always have control of everything, right?

Obama invented himself against all odds and repeated parental abandonment, and he worked hard to regiment his emotions. But now that can come across as imperviousness and inflexibility. He wants to run the agenda; he doesn't want the agenda to run him. Once you become president, though, there's no way to predict what your crises will be.

The best episodes of 'The West Wing' that dealt with policy and stuff, in my opinion, were the ones where they were in the middle of a crisis, and they were trying to figure out how to solve problems.

A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.

Given the daunting challenges that we face, it's important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.

September 11 was horrific, but I've been through enough crises before that I had my own pattern as to how to collect facts, what a leader should do, how to communicate with people, how to set up operating mechanisms to work our way through it.

I learned long ago on the battlefields of Vietnam that in a crisis, there is no substitute for clear-eyed leadership.

Our elite is primarily and increasingly managerial. A managerial elite manages. A crisis, unfortunately, requires thought. Thought is not a management function.

I don't believe the American people want a Gelding in the White House.

Every President has to have a scapegoat.

The leader is always alone in times of doom.

The last question I would ask of someone I was considering appointing to office is how he would act in a specific situation.

He [President George W. Bush] really doesn’t want a lot of advice from me.

As a politician, you can run from your problems or run toward your problems.

The longer political leaders shy away from the tough decisions, the greater the chance that there will be a lot more of them.

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.