Amity Shlaes Quotes

Well, Warren Harding, I have got you the presidency. What are you going to do with it?

It is my fondest wish that in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster.

I've never been a Clinton fan. He's had some accomplishments, and he's very skilled at politics, but, you know, he's had some successes and a very good economy. And the question is how much or how little of that does he deserve credit for.

Instead of focusing on growing jobs and reigniting our economy, President Obama focused on growing government and tried to remake the United States into the image of the debt-laden countries of Europe. His approach has been more spending, more regulation, and higher taxes.

The fundamental problem is that President Obama has grown government. He has grown the private sector jobs.

His Presidency gave his post-Presidency credibility.

I don't think the first hundred days measures the success or failure of any President.

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

I think President Obama has been an extraordinarily successful president, and that this period will record that with a bunch of exclamation points. But obviously, not everybody thinks that.

I think President Obama is weak, bored with the office, and an incompetent leader.

There are a lot of presidents in both parties - including President Obama - who had strong claims of executive privilege that I certainly think went too far.

I'll give President Obama credit that he's dealing with big issues. I've seen administrations come to town and only deal with the little ones. You know, he's confronting a lot of major concerns here, and he's the only president we're going to have for the next four years, so we hope he's got some degree of success.

Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency.

President Obama will go down as having passed some of the most historic bills in the history of this country.

It's pretty clear that over the last three months the economy has paused. And it's also pretty clear the American people are still demanding and asking the question, 'Where are the jobs?' And the reason we don't have new jobs is because of the job-killing agenda pursued by President Obama and his allies in the Congress.

We're going to need to absorb some pain. The Republicans want to pile all the pain on people who can least afford it and the middle class and Democrats under his leadership want to make sure that we can address deficit reduction and continue to make investments and shared sacrifice is going to be imperative in order to be able to do that.

President Clinton will, I think, lift everyone's spirit. He was a good president, an economic, balanced budget president. And President Obama, I believe, has been a very good president, too, and we will get reelected. You watch.

No doubt it was better to have become president than not.

Again, President Reagan was sort of an amiable presence out at the ranch by the last 6 months of his presidency. He had no effect on national policy at all.

President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history. I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said that Republicans' number one priority was the defeat of President Obama.

There is no debating that, under President Obama, corporate profits are at their highest levels in decades.

Well, the mad Roosevelt has a new achievement to his credit. He succeeded in defeating the party that furnished him a job for nearly all of his manhood days after leaving the ranch, and showed his gratitude for the presidency, at that party's hands. The eminent fakir can now turn to raising hell, his specialty, along other lines.

As you get further away from a presidency you are better able to assess that presidency.

[Assessing William Howard Taft:] It is very difficult for me to understand how a man who is so good as Chief Justice could have been so bad as President.