David Pietrusza

JFK had to act before his fragile body betrayed him.

No matter what office LBJ assumed he lifted greater than when he found it.

Politics look very simple to the outsider whether he is a businessman or a soldier _ it is only when you get into it that all the angles and hard work become apparent. James Forrestal

A lot of people here some South in your mouth, and they automatically think you're dumb. They think if you talk funny, you are funny. _ Lloyd Hand

Jack had an actor's control." Chuck Spalding

The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. _ Calvin Coolidge

Jousting with an obvious hoodlum couldn't hurt.

What we saw in Richard Nixon's face was the panic in his soul. _ Richard Goodwin

John F. Kennedy responded, as he often did when at his best, skillfully mixing dollops of wit with, self-deprecation, and the principle of not-really-going-near-the-question.

Henry Cabot Lodge was like medicine, good for you, but hard to take. _ Teddy White

Jack Kennedy protected a mature and presidential image _ tough, yet not unduly combative.

The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt.

Eleanor Roosevelt on the changes in John F. Kennedy that led her to drop her opposition to his nomination for president: "He has the qualities of a scholar, and a sense of history. I had the feeling that he was the man who can learn. I like him better than I ever had before because he seemed so little caulk-sure, and I think he has a mind that is open to new ideas.

In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, "He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases.

Richard Nixon coveted, to the point of obsession, a controversy-free, stage-managed coronation.

JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting.

Organizing a coup was not the same as wanting one.

The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha".