Rick Perlstein Quotes

One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew

To claim the mantle of purity is always a risky business. It just gives an excuse to be disillusioned once your ordinary humidity is exposed.

Richard Nixon's conversation was "loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides.

A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.

For the first time on Planet Earth (in 1964 America), a nation was made up of more college students than farmers. An unheard-of 42% of high school graduates sought higher education.

Teddy White lamented that TV might spell the death of serious politics: to give a thoughtful response to serious questions, politician needed a good thirty seconds to ponder, but television allowed only five seconds of silence at best. DDB (ad men) found nothing to lament and the fact. They were convinced you could learn everything you needed to KNOW about a product, which in this case happens to be a human being, in half a minute – the speed not of thought but of emotion.

A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman.

Chronicling the mid-1970s up session with Gerald Ford's clumsiness, the author quotes a medieval maxim that the king has two bodies. The head of state has a physical body like everyone else, but he also represents the body politic, either reflecting its majesty or its weakness.