Tavis Smiley Quotes

I think the president should be accessible, should answer questions that aren't pre-screened, but I think there should be a little bit of dignity to the presidency.

I've never covered the president in any way other than that he is ultimately responsible.

We need a presidency which acts and protects us.

Responsibility always stops at the president's desk.

Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.

Perhaps the mistake I made at the start of my mandate is not understanding the symbolic dimension of the president's role and not being solemn enough in my acts. A mistake for which I would like to apologise or explain myself and which I will not make again. Now, I know the job.

Ronald Reagan would never go into the Oval Office without his jacket on - that's how much he revered the presidency.

In the execution of Presidential decisions work to be true to his views, in fact and tone.

I think that presidents deserve to be questioned. Maybe irreverently, most of the time. Bring 'em down a size. You see a president, ask a question. You have one chance in the barrel. Don't blow it.

For the president to resign now would be wrong. President Clinton may have debased himself with his behavior, but we shouldn't debase the office with an impulsive overreaction.

The presidency awed me, but presidents do not. Perhaps I have always expected too much of them, but I believe that when they reach the highest office in the land, they should live up to the greatest honor that can come to a person in American political life. Some have stood the test better than others.

We've flown the president since Eisenhower, and we're going to continue to fly the president for generations to come. This is something we're very proud of.

We need a little more 'Hail to the Chief.'

I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.

The President is accountable only to the country.

Every President has to have a scapegoat.

The President has become increasingly the depository of all national ills, especially if things go wrong.

Most people still believe that the White House is a moral address and that only men and women of good character should occupy it.

When things don't go well they like to blame the Presidents, and that is one of the things that President's are paid for.

Making the bureaucracy accountable to the President in any comprehensive and enduring way is impossible. Making it alert to his preferences is possible in those cases where Presidents put loyal and competent subordinates in charge of making decisions.

Any man who has ever been honored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the American people.

The nature of the Presidency is such that you are always asking yourself what else could you be doing?.

What he does, faults and all, he's our president. And so I want him to be successful. When these tweets come out, I mean, do I look at 'em and say, 'Okay, where did that come from?' Yes. But I don't pick up the phone and say, 'What are you doing?' I just know that's who he is.

If you are an American, you have got to defend the standards of the presidency of the United States.

Donald Trump's more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says.