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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Every president to hold office has espoused some version of Americanism - the truths that we hold self-evident, even when those truths are not always in evidence. But for all their grand rhetoric and mostly good deeds, none was able to seal the deal on the trifecta of equality, plurality and socioeconomic ascendancy. Obama has.
Look, when you're the president, there's all kinds of things said about us. I mean, it's just the nature of the job.
Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation.
The president - every president - works for us. We don't work for him. We sometimes lose track of this, or rather get the balance wrong. Respect is due and must be palpable, but now and then you have to press, to either force them to be forthcoming or force them to reveal that they won't be.
We have at least learned that the offspring of presidents don't necessarily make good politicians themselves.
A president who believed that America's greatness is recoverable and expandable - a chief executive determined to lead us back to national restoration - would reject the crippling notions of national impotency that Obama has embraced.
We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.
I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a president who does things, we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything at all, if he gets up at night to go the bathroom, somehow, mystically, trouble will ensue.
There are limits on what a president can achieve or do, but the expectations are so great.
It is only requisite, for me to say to you, that the President places great reliance upon your skill, judgment and intimate knowledge.