Famous Quotes & Sayings

Robert Dallek Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Robert Dallek.

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Famous Quotes By Robert Dallek

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William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia in April of 1841, after only one month in office, was the first Chief Executive to hide his physical frailties. — Robert Dallek

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Presidential aspirants reach for the highest office to satisfy some yearning for greatness or even immortality. — Robert Dallek

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Access to presidential materials should be as wide as possible. — Robert Dallek

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Compared with other recent presidents whose stumbles and failures have assaulted the national self-esteem, memories of Kennedy continue to give the country faith that its better days are ahead. That's been reason enough to discount his limitations and remain enamored of his presidential performance. — Robert Dallek

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Despite its flaws, the American electoral system has produced Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Harry Truman. — Robert Dallek

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Experience helped Richard Nixon, but it didn't save him, and it certainly wasn't a blanket endorsement. He blundered terribly in dealing with Vietnam. — Robert Dallek

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Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy. — Robert Dallek

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Allegations that President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich partly in return for donations to his presidential library have raised questions about the value of such institutions and the federal appropriations that support them. — Robert Dallek

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Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order. — Robert Dallek

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Some Kennedy aides have always insisted that Johnson misread J.F.K.'s plans for Vietnam. They say that Kennedy had begun to rethink the U.S. presence in Indochina and was reluctant to increase it. — Robert Dallek

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As for Vietnam, what matters is that Kennedy successfully resisted pressure to send anything more than military advisers, a stance that was a likely prelude to complete withdrawal from the conflict. There is solid evidence of his eagerness to end America's military role in that country's civil war. — Robert Dallek

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It's always valuable for someone running for president ... to have as much bipartisan support as possible. — Robert Dallek

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Foreign policy - dealing as it does with the most charged political subjects of all, the safety and dignity of the nation - will always be political terrain particularly vulnerable to distortion and demagoguery. — Robert Dallek

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Every year since 1990, the Gallup poll has asked Americans to assess all the presidents since John F. Kennedy. And every year, Kennedy comes out on top. — Robert Dallek

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Reagan grows up in 1920s Dixon, Illinois, and it's the heartland of America. It's a time when Americans are particularly drawn to this small town world because it's beginning to pass. — Robert Dallek

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I think the public can t accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. They don t want to believe the world is that chaotic. It is. — Robert Dallek

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The nation should be able to remove by an orderly constitutional process any president with an unyielding commitment to failed policies and an inability to renew the country's hope. — Robert Dallek

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Racial segregation in the South not only separated the races, but it separated the South from the rest of the country. — Robert Dallek

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Late 19th-century populists saw bankers and industrialists manipulating markets to enrich themselves at the expense of small farmers and labourers and favoured political candidates promising economic relief through free and unlimited coinage of silver. — Robert Dallek

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By the time a second term rolls around, the illusions about a president have largely evaporated. — Robert Dallek

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At the end of the day, Americans are not so keen on ideologues, people who have such fixed positions that they can't see any virtue in the other side's point of view. — Robert Dallek

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Herbert Hoover was a man of genuine, fine character, but he lacked practical political sense. And he couldn't bend and shift and change with the requirements of the time. And he was a ruined President, because he was such a, I think, stiff-backed ideologue. And I think that speaks volumes about his character. — Robert Dallek

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The 1890s was an intensely patriotic decade for Americans. It was a time of neo-imperialism, when the European powers and the United States were establishing their flags around the globe. — Robert Dallek

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Historians evaluating George W. Bush's first term will focus on foreign policy and, most of all, 9/11. I think they will criticize him for his early reaction, for not returning at once to Washington, D.C. — Robert Dallek

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How many State of the Union addresses do people remember? They don't resonate that way. — Robert Dallek

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True, most Americans give lip service to the proposition that even the most exalted among us have their flaws, but we are eager to believe that presidents manage to rise above the limitations that beset the rest of us. — Robert Dallek

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When President Obama first unveiled his gun control proposals recommending a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and better background checks, there seemed to be momentum behind the effort. But then the proposals ran into a wall. — Robert Dallek

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McCarthy had ten years in the House of Representatives, only two terms as a senator. What did he pass? Are there any bills or any piece of legislation that he's identified with? Not at all. — Robert Dallek

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With television, you can make anyone look larger than life. — Robert Dallek

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Presidents need to be critically studied and analyzed. — Robert Dallek

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In counterfactual history, nothing is certain. — Robert Dallek

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Flattery was one of Kissinger's principal tools in winning over Nixon, and a tool he employed shamelessly. — Robert Dallek

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Historians partial to Kennedy see matters differently from those partial to L.B.J. Vietnam has become a point of contention in defending and criticizing J.F.K. — Robert Dallek

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In the late 19th century, the Populists - a protest movement of mainly disaffected farmers and workers - threatened to overturn established authority. — Robert Dallek

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It is very difficult for [people] to accept the idea that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could have killed someone as consequential as Kennedy. — Robert Dallek

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At the start of first terms, presidents invariably have a measure of goodwill. — Robert Dallek

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For style and for creating a mood of optimism and hope - Kennedy on that count is as effective as any president the country has had in its history. — Robert Dallek

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McGeorge Bundy was a brilliant man who'd had a meteoric academic career and was the youngest man ever to be dean of the Harvard faculty. But he was also arrogant and looked upon all sorts of people and politicians as not to be taken all that seriously. — Robert Dallek

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A national government using New Deal programs and the massive defense spending beginning with World War II and continuing through the Cold War was Johnson's vehicle for expanding the Southern economy and making it, as he hoped, one of the more prosperous regions of the country. — Robert Dallek

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Harry Truman wrote scathing letters, but he almost never sent them. — Robert Dallek

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After one party loses two elections in a row, there's sort of blood in the water. — Robert Dallek

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The Atlantic conference in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland is a dramatic moment in World War II history because for the first time, Roosevelt and Churchill are meeting face to face in this war. — Robert Dallek

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The greatest presidents have been those who demonstrated astute judgment in times of crisis - often despite the advice they were getting. — Robert Dallek

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When Gingrich attacked CNN's John King for bringing up his alleged proposal of an open marriage to his second wife, Gingrich accused him of lowering the level of discourse in a presidential debate, suggesting that such a discussion is unworthy of consideration by voters. — Robert Dallek

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What makes war interesting for Americans is that we don't fight war on our soil, we don't have direct experience of it, so there's an openness about the meanings we give to it. — Robert Dallek

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Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see. — Robert Dallek

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Theodore Roosevelt had drawn public attention to his attractive family in order to create a bond with ordinary Americans. Eleanor Roosevelt had successfully broached the idea that a First Lady could be nearly as much a public figure as her husband. — Robert Dallek

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The lifelong health problems of John F. Kennedy constitute one of the best-kept secrets of recent U.S. history - no surprise, because if the extent of those problems had been revealed while he was alive, his presidential ambitions would likely have been dashed. — Robert Dallek

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Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history. — Robert Dallek

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During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson. — Robert Dallek

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Nowadays, everyone seems to have a blog that finds readers. — Robert Dallek

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Presidents are not only the country's principal policy chief, shaping the nation's domestic and foreign agendas, but also the most visible example of our values. — Robert Dallek

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Truman is now seen as a near-great president because he put in place the containment doctrine boosted by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and NATO, which historians now see as having been at the center of American success in the cold war. — Robert Dallek

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What's in a person's heart and soul will not likely be changed by the ability to command a helicopter to land on the South Lawn. — Robert Dallek

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For those of us who cry out for gun control, our fears cannot be eliminated as long as the country remains an armed camp in which the most troubled among us can find ways to appropriate one of the easily available weapons in all our communities. — Robert Dallek

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They are pretty good at improvising, but God help us if they are given time to think. Dean Atchison — Robert Dallek

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Television has an awful lot to do with the Kennedy mystique and the fact that he's frozen in people's minds at the age of 46, and he was handsome and personable and witty and charming. — Robert Dallek

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My feeling is that it's a misreading of history to say that, as the Reagan supporters do, that Reagan won the Cold War. — Robert Dallek

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The disaster at the Bay of Pigs intensified Kennedy's doubts about listening to advisers from the CIA, the Pentagon, or the State Department who had misled him or allowed him to accept lousy advice. — Robert Dallek

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In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine. — Robert Dallek

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Obama is cutting back on the idea that we're going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else. — Robert Dallek

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Eisenhower was quite supportive of Kennedy and Johnson in terms of foreign policy. — Robert Dallek

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A president cannot sit on his hands and be seen as passive in the face of ruthless action by a foreign dictator. — Robert Dallek

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What I find so interesting is, Herbert Hoover in August 1928 said no country in the world was closer to abolishing poverty than the United States. And then, of course, we had the Great Depression. — Robert Dallek

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Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office. — Robert Dallek

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Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee in 1952, made a strong public commitment to ending the war in Korea, where fighting had reached a stalemate. — Robert Dallek

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Clinton's egregious act of self-indulgence was outdone by an impeachment based not on constitutionally required high crimes and misdemeanors but on a vindictive determination to bring down a president who had offended self-righteous moralists eager to put a different political agenda in place. — Robert Dallek

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George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war. — Robert Dallek

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John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer. — Robert Dallek

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Besieged by lawsuits that threatened to engulf almost everyone at the White House, Clinton assistants shunned paper or e-mail records of their daily deliberations. One told me that he would go down the hall to confer with his division chief face to face rather than discuss an issue on the telephone. — Robert Dallek

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JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself. — Robert Dallek

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There are examples of ex-presidents speaking out. Jimmy Carter has not held back on a variety of issues. Harry Truman didn't. — Robert Dallek

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Congress becomes the public voice of opposition. — Robert Dallek

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Concealing one's true medical condition from the voting public is a time-honored tradition of the American presidency. — Robert Dallek

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Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time. — Robert Dallek

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Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure. — Robert Dallek

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A presidential candidate's great desire is to be seen as pragmatic, and they hope their maneuvering and shifting will be seen in pursuit of some higher purpose. It doesn't mean they are utterly insincere. — Robert Dallek

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There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great. — Robert Dallek

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Vice President Biden's surprising declaration of unqualified support for gay marriage seems to have forced President Obama into a public endorsement of a controversial social issue. It is difficult not to suspect that Biden's pronouncement aimed to give the president some political cover. — Robert Dallek

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Whatever the long-term legal prospects for same-sex marriage, President Obama's willingness to put the matter front and center in an election year can at least make him a candidate for inclusion in Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. — Robert Dallek

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If Roosevelt didn't have World War II, he never would have had a third term. — Robert Dallek

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Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson's legislative success on civil rights. — Robert Dallek

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As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership. — Robert Dallek

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Historians will look back and say, 'Foreign policy in the Ford presidency was very much dominated by Kissinger, with a kind of continuity from the Nixon period.' Ford is not going to be remembered as a really significant foreign policy maker. — Robert Dallek

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Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership at a time of war, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back? — Robert Dallek

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When Johnson decided to fight for passage of the law John F. Kennedy had put before Congress in June 1963 banning segregation in places of public accommodation, he believed he was taking considerable political risks. — Robert Dallek

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I think experience is a terribly overrated idea when it comes to thinking about who should become president. — Robert Dallek

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The CIA's official history of the Bay of Pigs operation is filled with dramatic and harrowing details that not only lay bare the strategic, logistical, and political problems that doomed the invasion, but also how the still-green President John F. Kennedy scrambled to keep the U.S. from entering into a full conflict with Cuba. — Robert Dallek

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Ronald Reagan in foreign affairs, I think, was someone who had certain, very general ideas, general propositions by which he lives: To combat communism, to build up the American military power to assure our national security against any conceivable threat. — Robert Dallek

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Full federal funding for presidential libraries should bring with it new rules of control over papers and artifacts. — Robert Dallek

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John Kennedy had so many different medical problems that began when he was a boy. He started out with intestinal problems ... spastic colitis. — Robert Dallek

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To be sure, hunters and sportsmen back gun rights. Beyond that, there are millions who see guns as a defense against fear - fear of criminals breaking into their homes or assaulting them on city streets. — Robert Dallek

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There is a line between scurrilous nonsense and serious discussion that laps over, especially in this day and age when you've got all this electronic media and these blogs and this kind of fanatical impulse to bring down the opposing candidate. — Robert Dallek

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Kennedy saw the presidency as the vital center of government, and a president's primary goal as galvanizing commitments to constructive change. He aimed to move the country and the world toward a more peaceful future, not just through legislation but through inspiration. — Robert Dallek

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Despite an unqualified understanding that U.S. national security was inextricably bound up with Britain's survival, F.D.R. knew that his reelection in part rested on the hope that he would keep the country out of war. — Robert Dallek

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President Obama can talk about having no grand schemes and making no big gains, but the reality is he can't get anything of significance through Congress. — Robert Dallek

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At the end of their first years, there are few people who would have predicted that Truman would be elected in 1948 or that Reagan would get a second term. It's always premature to make some kind of categorical judgment after the first year in office. — Robert Dallek

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Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history. — Robert Dallek

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The Bay of Pigs is one of America's most infamous Cold War blunders, and it has been studied, debated, and dramatized endlessly ever since. — Robert Dallek

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I see a direct line between Kennedy and Richard Nixon and the opening to China and the detente with the Soviet Union. — Robert Dallek