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I do not believe any president can bind a successor president to give up his fundamental role as protector of the country.

People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.

Presidents always want to do nice, noble, long-run things, and Congress is less keen to do so. We've seen that throughout the history of this country.

The presidency awed me, but presidents do not. Perhaps I have always expected too much of them, but I believe that when they reach the highest office in the land, they should live up to the greatest honor that can come to a person in American political life. Some have stood the test better than others.

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.

I never believed that surrendering the executive power should be a condition of getting the second term. The second term should stand on its own feet.

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

I think a lot of presidents learn to be president by being president.

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

If the president is allowed to suspend constitutional rights on his own personal whims, our free republic has effectively ceased to exist.