“ JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself. ”
The art of diplomacy is finding a reasonable route among imperfect alternatives.
~ Robert Dallek
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.
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.
Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.
