Political success is a good deal pleasanter than political failure, but it too brings its problems.
We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress, which played a big part in his administration's problems.
Congress is hard to deal with, dealing with, you know, multiple parliaments and commissions and unions and this and that and the other, that's very complicated.
Populists feed on democratic dysfunction. As long as democratic elites and institutions in advanced industrial democracies remain unable or unwilling to tackle the myriad challenges facing their societies, we should expect populism to remain an attractive political option.
I was a minister in the Vajpayee government. Atalji wanted to do so many things. But, since he was heading a coalition government, he could not do all those things.
The issues that cross a president's desk are never easy. The easy questions don't even get to the president.
Washington faces many challenges these days, and today's United States Senate needs more trusted conservatives going there to make decisions and choices that put the people first and not the business-as-usual crowd.
Barack Obama took office in the middle of a massive financial crisis. He was handed a bunch of messes all around the world and at home.
When I ran for Presidency of the United States, I knew that this country faced serious challenges, but I could not realize - nor could any man realize who does not bear the burdens of this office - how heavy and constant would be those burdens
Obamacare is woven into the fabric of health care. It's very hard to just rip it out, as Donald Trump sort of acknowledged with The Wall Street Journal.
Cutting the fiscal deficit is not popular. That is the experience of all governments in all countries. Expenditure cuts hurt certain vested interests, and they don't like it.
There's no question about the fact that for Democrats, Texas is a tough place.
There are two things that will always be difficult for a democratic people to do: to start a war and to finish it
First of all we have to recognize that despite all the problems - and in some cases failures - that this regime has been much more successful, much more resilient, than people had anticipated.
The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.
There's nothing easy about running for president, I can tell you. It's tough, it's nasty, it's mean, it's vicious, it's beautiful. When you win, it's beautiful. And we are going to start - we are going to start winning for our country.
Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed. The fantastically crowded nine months of 1945 taught me that a President either is constantly on top of events or, if he hesitates, events will soon be on top of him. I never felt I could let up for a single moment.
In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem.
I take running for president and being president really seriously. It's a - maybe the toughest job in the world, right? And I knew that there was unfinished business from the successful two terms of President Obama, whom I had served, but that we needed to go further on the economy, on health care, and so much else.
No easy problems ever come to the President. If they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.
No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm.
Politicians get their power too late, and I think that he has inherited an impossible situation in which he is ill-equipped to deal.
It is hard for people outside the White House to understand the constant daily problems and issues that come up that require the president's attention, but he can not let himself get too personally involved.
The country didn't get that way in a week; we've had years and years of getting behind in our economy. So President [Barack] Obama stepped into a hellhole and people wanted him to change it as soon as he came in. But he's got his adversaries to deal with in the House and Senate, so it's not easy.
It is tough to run for public office and face an opponent, to decide on issues what is the best thing, then face the criticism from colleagues, voters, the press and defend yourself.
