Bob Schieffer Quotes

We elect our Presidents, be they Republican or Democrat, then start daring 'em to make good.

There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.

Since I'm the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it's understandable that people are saying, you know, 'What have you done?'

I think there is a huge responsibility upon governments to understand the consequence of their decisions.

Sometimes it's important to watch what the president does rather than what he says.

No prime minister, no government can expect to be unanswerable or unchallenged.

During Ronald Reagan's administration, '60 Minutes' ran a segment about the difference between Reagan's rhetoric and Reagan's actions. The show thought it had produced a hard-hitting piece; Reagan's team called up '60 Minutes' to thank them for the 15-minute commercial.

A lot of people have the expectation that politicians shouldn't just disappear into the woodwork even if they didn't win the election.

The Democrats are not seeking reelection on anything good. And everything bad that's happening is the result of Democrats having won elections and implementing their beliefs. It's not fate. It's not by accident. It's not coincidence. It's not the result of cosmic forces working against us. It is because specifically of policies, legislation, ideas, whatever you want to call it, implemented, put into action by this administration.

The president cannot escape from his office.

If you go back and you look at the presidency over the course of history, presidents tend to do what they campaigned on. In the 20th century, presidents between Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter accomplished 73 percent of the things that they said they would do as candidates. Part of that is because once they get into office, their credibility, their ability to do anything depends on doing the things that they said they would.

That's one of the major lessons: no president should ever take this nation to war without full public debate in the Congress and/or in the public.

What I'm encouraging President Trump and the Cabinet and congressional leaders to do, is let's keep our promises. Let's do what we said we would do, and that's what each and every one of you can hold all of us accountable for.

Being President is like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail... A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.

I feel like we put all the weight on the president, rather than distributing the weight to all of the elected officials.

I don't need a president with a bucket list!

I don't think ultimately presidents are judged by crowd sizes at their inauguration. I think they're judged by their accomplishments.

Presidents should not be exempted from the same standards of reason and evidence and justification that any other citizen or civil movement should be held to.

One of the first lessons a president has to learn is that every word he says weighs a ton.

A censure would put an indelible scar on the president's place in history, .. Monica Lewinsky is not Watergate. Let he who has no sin in this chamber cast the first stone.

The Constitution of the United States doesn't change the powers of the president based on the number by which you get elected.

I don't want to be on the bandwagon of dogging any president or anybody in positions where they have all these different constituencies.

I think Donald Trump needs to be judged on his own words and his own behavior and the American voter is getting ample evidence on which they can make that judgment.

I know both Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and President [Barack] Obama were very gracious and I respect that a lot in the way they handled it the day after, two days after. But I wish they would says something about it too. Because after all, these are supporters of President Obama and Hillary Clinton and maybe they could say something about this. Really not the right thing in the democracy.

A lot of my opposition to President Obama's policies had behind them 5, 6, 7 years of bad policies that made America less safe in my regard.