Bill Moyers Quotes

A president just can't make much showing against congress. They lay awake nights, thinking up things to be against the president on.

Getting members of Congress to do things they don’t want to do is a crucial part of being President.

The American system is so constituted that it produces a conflict between the Executive and Congress every time the Executive tries to be positive and strong.

If the president can make whatever policy he likes, we are governed not by law, but by the arbitrary whims of one man ...

Because of the perverse, hostile, and malignant state of the opposition [the Federalists], with their faculty of imposing on the public mind and producing excitements, every measure originating with the executive will be attacked.

If you can’t bring the people with you, you lose the policy

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

The presidency is more than a popularity contest.

When you see how the President makes political or policy decisions, you see who he is. The essence of the Presidency is decision-making.

Johnson showed me how important it was to use every hour of every day to shape national policy while we had the power to do so.

You don’t need more hearings. You need more gumption. You’ll be treated like office boys until you stand up and kick them [the Nixon White House] in the slats.

The imperial Presidency requires a passive Congress.

No merely legislative body could control a single, concentrated Executive ….

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time.

Any person would like a line item veto if the chief executive at that time agrees with their particular views.

The constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime President.

The presidency is a big job and there are some people who don't always wish him well. There are those who throw banana peels in his way hoping he'll slip.

American politics is not, as is that of Europe, "a prelude to civil war"; it cannot become either entirely irresponsible or entirely dogmatic; and it must not try to be logical. It is a rocking sea of checks and balances in which uncompromising absolutes must drown.

For elites, the politics of governing is seen as a continual struggle to manage public emotions so that they do not overwhelm sound public policy.

The people who make the most noise get the most publicity. Interest groups do count as opposed to data and rationality.

I am well aware of what three past presidents have said, but that will not be worth five cents if the people and the Congress do not support their president now.”

... the persons who control the President's rhetoric exert an enormous influence over his actions and policies.

When you're trying to make decisions in the executive branch, sometimes these news reports get inside your decision making cycle.

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

Potential to alter permanently the political relationship between the President and Congress is enormous.... [It would] outmode contemporary informal negotiation processes between the political branches.