The very fact that Barack Obama – an African-American – was twice elected to the presidency will always be the lead line in that hard-to-meld, gold-plated paragraph. – Douglas Brinkley
Her continuity – you know, if you connect Harriet Tubman, who died in 1913, to Rosa Parks, born in 1913, you get this extraordinary spectrum of the African-American experience. – Douglas Brinkley
John Kerry can be absolutely ruthless. I would not want to be on his enemies list when he’s ready to go after you. – Douglas Brinkley
The myth-making about Appomattox started from the moment Lee left the courthouse on his horse to travel to Richmond. – Douglas Brinkley
Reagan never cottoned to dictators. He was pure in this notion in a true belief that democracy was the best solution in the world because it spoke to people’s hopes and dreams and aspirations, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of speech. – Douglas Brinkley
To Armstrong, constantly speaking about ‘Apollo 11’ only diminished the magic. That’s why he worked overtime to avoid notice, living a quiet life in Indian Hill, Ohio. – Douglas Brinkley
President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War. – Douglas Brinkley
If you’re a Kennedy and you go to Italy or you go to Argentina, you’re treated as royalty. And in the United States, we’re endlessly fascinated by the family. – Douglas Brinkley
While the scars of the monstrous Civil War still remain, the wounds have closed since 1865, in large part, because of the civility of Grant and Lee. – Douglas Brinkley
The Middle East is the tinder box of the world, and to be able to remove a nuclear threat of any kind out of Iran, that would have been a big deal, very positive step forward. – Douglas Brinkley
I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement. – Douglas Brinkley
Everybody trusted Cronkite because he reminded them of their favorite uncle or trusted family physician. Being square in the age of the Beatles made Cronkite retro cool. – Douglas Brinkley
John Kerry only went to prep schools because he had an aunt who had the money to pay for his way into those prep schools. – Douglas Brinkley
Although Cronkite had once crash landed in a Dutch potato field under enemy fire, he chose instead to focus on celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands at the hands of the Free Dutch. – Douglas Brinkley
I think there’s a green side to John Kerry, if you like, that he’s an environmental activist. His record on the environment is as best as you have on a pro-environment record of anybody in the U.S. Senate. – Douglas Brinkley
There is nobody that’s ever going to fill Ted Kennedy’s shoes, and that’s a tall order for somebody in the family to try to live up to. – Douglas Brinkley
Richard Kerry not only was a pilot in World War II, but was a civil servant. He did not come from money. – Douglas Brinkley
Nixon was always willing to be bipartisan, so there are a lot of surprises in the man. – Douglas Brinkley
Unfortunately, one of the biggest misperceptions the American public harbors is that Katrina was a week-long catastrophe. In truth, it’s better to view it as an era. – Douglas Brinkley
Nobody has trusted the Iranian government from day one, but the idea of just refusing to have any kind of talks is dangerous in the extreme. Every administration says at least that we’re trying to have talks between Israel and Palestine and solve the Middle East peace problem. – Douglas Brinkley
Some presidents, such as Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, are political sailors – they tack with the wind, reaching difficult policy objectives through bipartisan maneuvering and pulse-taking. – Douglas Brinkley
The Edmund Pettus Bridge – which in 2013 was declared a National Historic Landmark – isn’t symbolic of the Civil War in a meaningful way. It is, however, the modern-day battlefield where the voting rights movement was born. – Douglas Brinkley
While the old spiritual ‘Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last’ was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge. – Douglas Brinkley
We can only imagine the history of the free world today if, at the end of the Civil War, there had been two countries: the United States and the Confederate States of America. – Douglas Brinkley
John Kerry wants to be the hero in his own drama. He likes King Arthur and the Round Table. He likes the young swashbuckling Churchill, and he loved the early antics of Theodore Roosevelt. – Douglas Brinkley
Truman has become the patron saint of failed presidents because he left office with a 27 percent approval rating, and people were saying, ‘To err is Truman,’ yet look at what he did: the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the Truman Doctrine. – Douglas Brinkley
It is a long revisionist road up from the bottom for George W. Bush. He is ranked toward the bottom rung of presidents. – Douglas Brinkley
What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys. – Douglas Brinkley