On Personalities & People

> "John Foster Dulles was the greatest of the cold-war warriors. His were the fightingest years of that war--and part of his skill was that not one single American died in battle."

> " 'I like Ike.' Never was a political slogan more apt or more successful. They like him today, even though his prestige has diminished. And along with his likeableness, Ike had dignity and the command-assurance of a soldier. The eight Eisenhower years were great years for the Republic."

>-"Harry Truman--how badly can history miscast? The American people rather liked him when he first turned up in the White House. He was embarrassingly humble. He said he wasn't up to the job. But there was no escape. He decided, he acted. But for whatever reasons--was it because he was vulgar?--Truman's popularity kept going down, never up, and when he was elected President in his own right in November 1948, it was such a surprise as to seem to be a fluke--which it was. When Harry Truman left the White House in 1953, almost nobody seemed to be sorry to see him go. And yet today, Harry Truman is a candidate for the rank of one of the great American Presidents. He deserves that estimation. He deserves it because in world leadership, he so often did what was so courageously right. He had all the virtues of a Missouri mule."

> Kennedy style! That is the word. The Kennedy style was precisely what Americans needed. It gave a lift to Americans' pride in their country. He was a fun man after hours. Despite the atom bomb and all that, America was again becoming a fun country. Kennedy did not actually accomplish much in a specific sense during his three years in the White House. Neither in domestic nor foreign affairs can a great deal be put to his account. What was important about President Kennedy was not what he did but who he was. In this period of the American century, what millions of can-do Americans needed was not so much the capacity to do as the courage to be."

> On Lyndon Johnson: "By now, the term Great Society has become the object of Bronx cheers and other catcalls, both highbrow and lowbrow. That was only to be expected. As for me, I have just reread [President Johnson's Ann Arbor speech], and I esteem it now, as I did when it was made, as one of the ten or twelve great milestones in American history."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.