Presidential Speech Quotes

I heard one presidential candidate say that what this country needed was a president for the nineties. I was set to run again. I thought he said a president IN his nineties.

Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.

When picking a leader, choose a peacemaker. One who unites, not divides. A cultured leader who supports the arts and true freedom of speech, not censorship.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.

The specific use of folks as an exclusionary and inclusionary signal, designed to make the speaker sound like one of the boys or girls, is symptomatic of a debasement of public speech inseparable from a more general erosion of American cultural standards. Casual, colloquial language also conveys an implicit denial of the seriousness of whatever issue is being debated: talking about folks going off to war is the equivalent of describing rape victims as girls (unless the victims are, in fact, little girls and not grown women). Look up any important presidential speech in the history of the United States before 1980, and you will find not one patronizing appeal to folks. Imagine: 'We here highly resolve that these folks shall not have died in vain; and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.

What is patriotism? Let us begin with what patriotism is not. It is not patriotic to dodge the draft and to mock war heroes and their families. It is not patriotic to discriminate against active-duty members of the armed forces in one’s companies, or to campaign to keep disabled veterans away from one’s property. It is not patriotic to compare one’s search for sexual partners in New York with the military service in Vietnam that one has dodged. It is not patriotic to avoid paying taxes, especially when American working families do pay. It is not patriotic to ask those working, taxpaying American families to finance one’s own presidential campaign, and then to spend their contributions in one’s own companies. It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon Russia to intervene in an American presidential election. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies. It is not patriotic to share an adviser with Russian oligarchs. It is not patriotic to solicit foreign policy advice from someone who owns shares in a Russian energy company. It is not patriotic to read a foreign policy speech written by someone on the payroll of a Russian energy company. It is not patriotic to appoint a national security adviser who has taken money from a Russian propaganda organ. It is not patriotic to appoint as secretary of state an oilman with Russian financial interests who is the director of a Russian-American energy company and has received the “Order of Friendship” from Putin. The point is not that Russia and America must be enemies. The point is that patriotism involves serving your own country. The

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

I told you I was moved to tears by a speech a former president gave. It's not that I love politics or even the president--I just love to be convinced, to be guided into feeling exactly what the speaker wants me to feel. I give myself up to oration, to God, which is you when I let it be,

Kennedy’s address announcing the Apollo program was one of the great presidential speeches of all time. He challenged us. He excited us. We reach for impossible things, he said, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” He

Speech is one of the few abilities that human beings share across all creeds, faiths, races, and ethnicities. By nature, it connects us, it strengthens us, and it empowers us. Speech as affirmation or as dissent should be cherished and respected.

Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 presidential campaign, aggressively exploited the riots and fears of black crime, laying the foundation for the “get tough on crime” movement that would emerge years later. In a widely quoted speech, Goldwater warned voters, “Choose the way of [the Johnson] Administration and you have the way of mobs in the street.”41 Civil rights activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand. “If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality,” argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.42

the government both in the executive and the legislative branches must carry out in good faith the platforms upon which the party was entrusted with power. But the government is that of the whole people; the party is the instrument through which policies are determined and men chosen to bring them into being. The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.

Harrison’s 8,400-word inaugural speech was the longest ever, while his 30-day Presidency was the shortest.

Harding was the first sitting Senator to be elected President, and the first to ride to and from his Inauguration in an automobile.

With a noontime temperature of 55o, January 20, 1981 (Reagan’s first inaugural) was the warmest on record.

In 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they both died. They died on the same day, within a few hours of each other, and that day was the Fourth of July.

Pierce was the first President to “affirm” rather than “swear” his oath. He was also the first to have memorized his inaugural speech.

Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.      My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

The men who mine coal and fire furnaces and balance ledgers and turn lathes and pick cotton and heal the sick and plant corn—all serve as proudly, and as profitably, for America as the statesmen who draft treaties and the legislators who enact laws.

however much such loans may temporarily relieve the situation, the Government is still indebted for the amount of the surplus thus accrued, which it must ultimately pay, while its ability to pay is not strengthened, but weakened by a continued deficit.

We teachers break our bodies to give you a shirt that you will wear in the future, to conferences, to presidential speeches, to autograph signings. That is up to you and if you can do that for at least in a little thank to us. Then thank you, thank you all.

But right now we’re in a place that mirrors the darkest days of our country’s history. On February 10, 2007, some 146 years after Fort Sumter surrendered and the American Civil War began, Barack Obama announced his first presidential campaign in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown of Springfield, Illinois. In that speech, Obama declared that, like Lincoln, he was out to “free a people” and “transform a nation.” Without question, we’re living in a nation more divided than any since Lincoln’s presidency, and we’ve entered a time and place that may be as dangerous as it was during the Lincoln years.

Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

Ambedkar’s presidential speech elaborated on these themes. He argued forcefully that the multiplicity of castes, races, religions and languages could not come in the way of India’s readiness for independence. His eloquent and scathing indictment of imperialism attacked Britain for the impoverishment of India and for doing nothing to lighten either the burden of untouchability or the exploitation of peasants and workers. Finally, his reference to ‘capitalists’ and ‘landlords’ and his characterization of the Congress leaders as ‘feudalists’ indicate the growing influence of socio-economic radicalism on his thinking.

A special act of Congress enabled King to take his oath of office in Cuba—the only President or Vice President to be sworn in outside the United States—later in March. King returned home to Alabama in early April and died two days later, the only Vice President to never make it to the national capital during his term of office.

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores. It is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend

IRISH BLESSING   And may I conclude with a little Irish blessing – although, some suggest it’s a curse: May those who love us, love us. And those who don’t love us, may God turn their hearts. And if He doesn’t turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping. Speech on Administrative Goals to Senior Presidential Appointees, September 8, 1987

The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal tender. The present issue of United States notes has been sustained by the necessities of war; but such paper should depend for its value and currency upon its convenience in use and its prompt redemption in coin at the will of the holder, and not upon its compulsory circulation. These notes are not money, but promises to pay money.

Nixon became the first (and to date, only) former Vice President to be elected President (every other Vice President who moved into the Presidency either succeeded upon his predecessor’s death, or won election directly from the Vice Presidency).

Roosevelt's productivity resulted from how he chose to spend his time. He read frequently due to his belief that efficiency did not come from packing in scheduled activities down to every last minute of the day. Rather, it was through the regular feeding of his intellect. Even during the height of a presidential campaign, he packed in nearly four hours of reading a day. He enjoyed works of fiction, science, political philosophy, and history. One can imagine a nervous political aide bursting in his study, telling Roosevelt to put down his copy of Cicero because he was scheduled to begin the day's fourth speech in only two minutes. Researcher Robert Talbert notes that a second explanation for Roosevelt's productivity was his method of splitting up his schedule. His reading times were broken up into 45 minute-increments, divided between three half-hour time slots and three one-hour time slots. There is no way that Roosevelt could have known this, but such a segmented approach to reading is the best way for the brain to retain information. A 2008 study from the University of Illinois found that the brain's attentional resources drop after a long period of focusing on a single activity. Even brief diversions can significantly increase one's ability to focus on a task for a long period of time.

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts had won in the closest presidential election since 1916. Hatless and handsome, he had given people faith in the future when he gave his acceptance speech. I can assure you that every degree of mind and spirit that I possess will be devoted to the long-range interests of the United States and of the cause of freedom around the world.

recalled what Jordan had said at our last Republican Conference meeting on January 5: He had made a strident speech about the constitutional text governing presidential elections, based entirely on the wrong provision of the Constitution. It had been embarrassing. I also remembered that Jim had been at the December 21 White House meeting where Donald Trump’s plans for January 6 were discussed.

The firm’s fourth partner, Jeff Nussbaum, had carved out a niche writing jokes for public figures. It was he who taught me about the delicate balance all public-sector humorists hope to strike. Writing something funny for a politician, I learned, is like designing something stunning for Marlon Brando past his prime. The qualifier is everything. At first I didn’t understand this. In June, President Obama’s speechwriters asked Jeff to pitch jokes for an upcoming appearance at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner. I sent him a few ideas, including one about the president and First Lady’s recent trip to see a Broadway show: “My critics are upset it cost taxpayer dollars to fly me and Michelle to New York for date night. But let me be clear. That wasn’t spending. It was stimulus.” Unsurprisingly, my line about stimulating America’s first couple didn’t make it into the script. But others did. The morning after the speech, I watched on YouTube as President Obama turned to NBC reporter Chuck Todd. “Chuck embodies the best of both worlds: he has the rapid-fire style of a television correspondent, and the facial hair of a radio correspondent.” That was my joke! I grabbed the scroll bar and watched again. The line wasn’t genius. The applause was largely polite. Still, I was dumbfounded. A thought entered my brain, and then, just a few days later, exited the mouth of the president of the United States. This was magic. Still, even then, I had no illusions of becoming a presidential speechwriter. When friends asked if I hoped to work in the White House, I told them Obama had more than enough writers already. I meant it.

Greeley campaigned from the back of a train, delivering scores of speeches and previewing the whistle-stop style that later marked presidential campaigns. His campaign stumbled from the start and never found a secure footing. He was kept busy explaining his history of derogatory statements about Democrats. “I never said all Democrats were saloon keepers,” he protested. “What I said was that all saloon keepers were Democrats.

But dire as the situation may be, there is some hope.  Genuine hope, not the hope that is found in presidential speeches and pablum.  Hope that is practical, real, and will yield results.  However, this hope comes from the only place real hope can come from – within – which means we have to focus on ourselves and what is within our control to realize this hope and capitalize on it.  This isn’t to say that the world will turn out all roses and dachshunds, nor is it going to be the “faux depressing type of hope” akin to when your mother would say,   “Well at least you aren’t a cancerous, Ebola-infected, starving, blind quadriplegic, leper living in war-torn Ethiopia with lice!”   But at minimum this book will show you there is a future, you can live a happy life, the left will get their comeuppance, and no matter how bad it gets, there is always a way to “Enjoy the Decline.

This was an administration that approved the sale of 20 percent of America’s uranium to Russia with a $145 million payback to the Clinton Foundation, and a quick $500,000 to Bill for a speech in Moscow. Obama’s Department of Justice was so corrupt, so unlawful, so immoral that they tried to drag a corrupt woman across the 2016 presidential election finish line after she put our classified secrets at risk. They watched as she deleted thirty thousand emails and destroyed evidence.

My dear Sir. Yours of the 13th. is just received. My engagements are such that I can not, at any very early day, visit Rock-Island, to deliver a lecture, or for any other object. As to the other matter you kindly mention, I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. I certainly am flattered, and gratified, that some partial friends think of me in that connection; but I really think it best for our cause that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made. Let this be considered confidential. Yours very truly, {Abraham Lincoln}

The nature of the present economic crisis illustrates very clearly the need for departures from unmitigated and unrestrained self-seeking in order to have a decent society. Even John McCain, the 2008 U.S. Republican presidential candidate, complained constantly in his campaign speeches of “the greed of Wall Street.” Smith had a diagnosis for this: he called promoters of excessive risk in search of profits “prodigals and projectors”—which, by the way, is quite a good description of many of the entrepreneurs of credit swaps insurances and subprime mortgages over the recent past.

Neither Trump nor his Russian backers spent very much money during the campaign. Television did the advertising for them free of charge. Even the Twitter accounts of MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and NBC mentioned Trump twice as often as they mentioned Clinton. When Russia began to release hacked emails, the networks and the media played along. Russia thus influenced the headlines and even the questions posed in the presidential debates. Content from hacked emails figured in two of the three debates; in the final one, the debate moderator accepted an erroneous Russian recasting of Clinton’s words in a speech, and made of it a central issue.

Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 presidential campaign, aggressively exploited the riots and fears of black crime, laying the foundation for the “get tough on crime” movement that would emerge years later. In a widely quoted speech, Goldwater warned voters, “Choose the way of [the Johnson] Administration and you have the way of mobs in the street.”41 Civil rights activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand. “If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality,” argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.

[The presidential candidate] was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that “of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. (...) He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an “aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.

And then I saw him speak. Years later, after writing dozens upon dozens of presidential speeches, it would become impossible to listen to rhetoric without editing it in my head. On that historic Iowa evening, Obama began with a proclamation: “They said this day would never come.” Rereading those words today, I have questions. Who were “they,” exactly? Did they really say “never”? Because if they thought an antiwar candidate with a robust fund-raising operation could never win a divided three-way Democratic caucus, particularly with John Edwards eating into Hillary Clinton’s natural base of support among working-class whites, then they didn’t know what they were talking about. All this analysis would come later, though, along with stress-induced insomnia and an account at the Navy Mess. At the time, I was spellbound. The senator continued: “At this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said you couldn’t do.” He spoke like presidents in movies. He looked younger than my dad. I didn’t have time for a second thought, or even a first one. I simply believed. Barack Obama spoke for the next twelve minutes, and except for a brief moment when the landing gear popped out and I thought we were going to die, I was riveted. He told us we were one people. I nodded knowingly at the gentleman in the middle seat. He told us he would expand health care by bringing Democrats and Republicans together. I was certain it would happen as he described. He looked out at a sea of organizers and volunteers. “You did this,” he told them, “because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas—that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

Trump was hardly in office when Democrats and their media allies began tarring him and his top aides as “white nationalists.” There were no facts to support the charge, only innuendo, and tortured interpretations of the word “nationalism” and of presidential rhetoric. One of the worst examples was the Charlottesville, Virginia, historical monument controversy. In that city, leftist protesters demanded the removal of “Confederate” monuments and memorials. The term “Confederate” in their usage extended even to statues of Thomas Jefferson and explorers Lewis and Clark (for being “white colonists”). This sparked a protest by conservatives who objected to the statue removals—not because they were racists, but because they didn’t want to see the removal of these reminders of America’s history. A “Unite the Right” rally was planned for August 11–12, 2017, to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Unfortunately, the rally attracted extremist groups, including neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, and the KKK. During the rally, a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of leftist protestors, killing a woman. In response, Trump made a series of statements condemning the Klan, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and racism in general. In one of those speeches, he added, “You also had some very fine people on both sides.”115 Even though he had just condemned racism in his previous breath, many Democrats and pundits condemned Trump for calling racists “fine people.” This was not only absurd but dishonest. The “fine people on both sides” to whom he referred were those who wanted to remove the statues because they were reminders of slavery and those who wanted to preserve the statues because they were reminders of history. Trump never praised racists as “fine people”—he condemned them in no uncertain terms. But to the

A Presidential speech by a real President on Peace in the World John Kennedy 10th June 1963 “We need to examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But this is a dangerous defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that War is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are man made and they therefore can be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable. I am not here referring to the absolute and universal concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the values of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our immediate goal. Let us focus instead on a more practical more attainable goal—based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution of human institutions in a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single simple key to his peace—no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic not static, changing to meet the needs of each new generation. For peace is a process, a way of solving problems. So let us not be blind to our differences but let us also direct our attention to our common interests and the means by which these differences can be resolved, and if we now can not end our differences at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air, we all cherish our childrens futures and we are all mortal.

People talk about Eisenhower's golden age.... It all happened without me. What is the vice presidency? The Constitution dictates only two duties: casting the deciding vote if the Senate is deadlocked and replacing the president if he dies or is impeached. apart from waiting for those two things to happen, you made the rest up and were duly forgotten by history. The exception being Aaron Burr, who shot someone, decisively lowering the bar for the rest of us. What I remember is small pieces of the world: the West Wing, the insides of planes and hotel lobbies and conference rooms. My life was dinners with Pat and the children; airplane flights; placeholder meetings with foreign dignitaries during which I nodded and reminded them I had no power to make and agreement but would speak to the president. Stomach-turning formal breakfasts, speeches to party elders and tradesmen. I opened factories in Detroit and Akron, breathing the various stinks of canneries, slaughterhouses, or rubber plans and bestowing that vice presidential combination of glamour, flattery, and the tacit reminder that they didn't quite rate a visit from the top guy.

Hillary rode her husband’s success to become first lady of Arkansas, then first lady of the United States. Then she won an easy race in liberal New York to become its junior senator. As a senator she accomplished, well, nothing. Then she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, losing to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state. Despite extensive travels, Hillary’s achievements as secretary of state are essentially nil. As with Benghazi, most of her notable actions are screwups. In an apparent confirmation of the Peter Principle, however, Hillary is now back as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Hillary is fortunate, not merely in her career path, but also in being the surprise recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been rained on her and her husband both directly and through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion in contributions. A substantial portion of that came from foreign governments. Some sixteen nations together have given $130 million. In addition, through speeches and consulting fees, more than $100 million has ended up in the pockets of the Clintons themselves. The foundation, although ostensibly a charitable enterprise, gives only one dollar out of ten to charity. It has also been disclosed that the Clintons have developed a penchant for traveling in high style, and use a substantial amount of donation money on private planes and penthouse suites. The rest of the loot seems to have been accumulated into a war chest that is at the behest of the Clintons and the Hillary presidential campaign.

If I had lied to the CIA, perhaps I might have passed a test. Instead of writing a book about the White House, I’d be poisoning a drug kingpin with a dart gun concealed inside a slightly larger dart gun, or making love to a breathy supermodel in the interest of national security. I’ll never know. I confessed to smoking pot two months before. The sunniness vanished from my interviewer’s voice. “Normally we like people who break the rules,” Skipper told me, “but we can’t consider anyone who’s used illegal substances in the past twelve months.” Just like that, my career as a terrorist hunter was over. I thought my yearning for higher purpose would vanish with my CIA dreams, the way a Styrofoam container follows last night’s Chinese food into the trash. To my surprise, it stuck around. In the weeks that followed, I pictured myself in all sorts of identities: hipster, world traveler, banker, white guy who plays blues guitar. But these personas were like jeans a half size too small. Trying them on gave me an uncomfortable gut feeling and put my flaws on full display. My search for replacement selves began in November. By New Year’s Eve I was mired in the kind of existential funk that leads people to find Jesus, or the Paleo diet, or Ayn Rand. Instead, on January 3, I found a candidate. I was on an airplane when I discovered him, preparing for our initial descent into JFK. This was during the early days of live in-flight television, and I was halfway between the Home Shopping Network and one of the lesser ESPNs when I stumbled across coverage of a campaign rally in Iowa. Apparently, a caucus had just finished. Speeches were about to begin. With nothing better to occupy my time, I confirmed that my seat belt was fully fastened. I made sure my tray table was locked. Then, with the arena shrunk to fit my tiny seatback screen, I watched a two-inch-tall guy declare victory. It’s not like I hadn’t heard about Barack Obama. I had heard his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. His presidential campaign had energized my more earnest friends. But I was far too mature to take them seriously. They supported someone with the middle name Hussein to be president of the United States. While they were at it, why not cast a ballot for the Tooth Fairy? Why not nominate Whoopi Goldberg for pope?

In the real world, however, the claim that censorship or enforced orthodoxy protects minorities and the marginalized has been comprehensively disproved, again and again and again. “Censorship has always been on the side of authoritarianism, conformity, ignorance, and the status quo,” write Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman in their book Free Speech on Campus, “and advocates for free speech have always been on the side of making societies more democratic, more diverse, more tolerant, more educated, and more open to progress.”30 They and former American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen, in her powerful book Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, list the horrors and oppressions which have befallen minorities in the name of making society safe from dangerous ideas. “Laws censoring ‘hate speech’ have predictably been enforced against those who lack political power,” writes Strossen.31 In America, under the Alien and Sedition Acts, authorities censored and imprisoned sympathizers of the opposition party (including members of Congress) and shut down opposition newspapers; under the Comstock laws, they censored works by Aristophanes, Balzac, Oscar Wilde, and James Joyce (among others); under the World War I anti-sedition laws, they convicted more than a thousand peace activists, including the Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president in 1920 from a prison cell.32 In more recent times, when the University of Michigan adopted one of the first college speech codes in 1988, the code was seized upon to charge Blacks with racist speech at least twenty times.33 When the United Kingdom passed a hate-speech law, the first person to be convicted was a Black man who cursed a white police officer.34 When Canadian courts agreed with feminists that pornography could be legally restricted, authorities in Toronto promptly charged Canada’s oldest gay bookstore with obscenity and seized copies of the lesbian magazine Bad Attitude.35 All around the world, authorities quite uncoincidentally find that “hateful” and “unsafe” speech is speech which is critical of them—not least in the United States, where, in 1954, the U.S. Postal Service used obscenity laws to censor ONE, a gay magazine whose cover article (“You Can’t Print It!”) just happened to criticize the censorship policies of the U.S. Postal Service.

It is already apparent that the word 'Fascist' will be one of the hardest-worked words in the Presidential campaign. Henry Wallace called some people Fascists the other day in a speech and next day up jumped Harrison Spangler, the Republican, to remark that if there were any Fascists in this country you would find them in the New Deal's palace guard. It is getting so a Fascist is a man who votes the other way. Persons who vote your way, of course, continue to be 'right-minded people.' We are sorry to see this misuse of the word 'Fascist.' If we recall matters, a Fascist is a member of the Fascist party or a believer in Fascist ideals. These are: a nation founded on bloodlines, political expansion by surprise and war, murder or detention of unbelievers, transcendence of state over individual, obedience to one leader, contempt for parliamentary forms, plus some miscellaneous gymnastics for the young and a general feeling of elation. It seems to us that there are many New Deal Democrats who do not subscribe to such a program, also many aspiring Republicans. Other millions of Americans are nonsubscribers. It's too bad to emasculate the word 'Fascist' by using it on persons whose only offense is that they vote the wrong ticket. The word should be saved for use in cases where it applies, as it does to members of our Ku Klux Klan, for instance, whose beliefs and practices are identical with Fascism. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), there is a certain quality in Fascism which is quite close to a certain quality in nationalism. Fascism is openly against people-in-general, in favor of people-in-particular. Nationalism, although in theory not dedicated to such an idea, actually works against people-in-general because of its preoccupation with people-in-particular. It reminds one of Fascism, also, in its determination to stabilize its own position by whatever haphazard means present themselves--by treaties, policies, balances, agreements, pacts, and the jockeying for position which is summed up in the term 'diplomacy.' This doesn't make an America Firster a Fascist. It simply makes him, in our opinion, a man who hasn't grown into his pants yet. The persons who have written most persuasively against nationalism are the young soldiers who have got far enough from our shores to see the amazing implications of a planet. Once you see it, you never forget it.

Freedom of speech and the right to protest have undermined the foundational culture of mutual honor and respect that was universal among the founders of the United States of America.  Her earliest governmental leaders were statesmen, not politicians.  They carefully held their various views within a priority of mutual honor and respect.  The 2016 presidential race is a clear repudiation of such culture and character.

The average delegate never knows what is going on. The hall is in dreadful confusion, and the speeches from the platforms are mainly irrelevant and unintelligible. The real business of a national convention is done down under the stage, in dark and smelly rooms, or in hotel suites miles away. Presently a State boss fights his way out to his delegation on the floor, and tells his slaves what is to be voted on, and how they are to vote. (Cited in Hinderaker 1956, 158)

It is instructive to observe these great men at the solemn business of selecting a First Chief for the greatest free Republic ever seen on earth. One hears, in their speeches, such imbecilities.... One sees them at close range, sweating, belching, munching peanuts, chasing fleas. They parade idiotically, carrying dingy flags and macerating one another's corns. They crowd the aisles, swapping gossip, most of it untrue.... The average delegate never knows what is going on. The hall is in dreadful confusion, and the speeches from the platforms are mainly irrelevant and unintelligible. The real business of a national convention is done down under the stage, in dark and smelly rooms, or in hotel suites miles away. Presently a State boss fights his way out to his delegation on the floor, and tells his slaves what is to be voted on, and how they are to vote. (Cited in Hinderaker 1956, 158)

Hillary is fortunate, not merely in her career path, but also in being the surprise recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been rained on her and her husband both directly and through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion in contributions. A substantial portion of that came from foreign governments. Some sixteen nations together have given $130 million. In addition, through speeches and consulting fees, more than $100 million has ended up in the pockets of the Clintons themselves. The foundation, although ostensibly a charitable enterprise, gives only one dollar out of ten to charity. It has also been disclosed that the Clintons have developed a penchant for traveling in high style, and use a substantial amount of donation money on private planes and penthouse suites. The rest of the loot seems to have been accumulated into a war chest that is at the behest of the Clintons and the Hillary presidential campaign. How

On television and on the front pages of the major newspapers, Trump clearly seemed to be losing the election. Each new woman who came forward with charges of misbehavior became a focal point of coverage, coupled with Trump’s furious reaction, his ever darkening speeches, and the accompanying suggestion that they were dog whistles aimed at racists and anti-Semites. “Trump’s remarks,” one Washington Post story explained, summing up the media’s outlook, “were laced with the kind of global conspiracies and invective common in the writings of the alternative-right, white-nationalist activists who see him as their champion. Some critics also heard echoes of historical anti-Semitic slurs in Trump’s allegations that Clinton ‘meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty’ and that media and financial elites were part of a soulless cabal.” This outlook, which Clinton’s campaign shared, gave little consideration to the possibility that voters might be angry at large banks, international organizations, and media and financial elites for reasons other than their basest prejudices. This was the axis on which Bannon’s nationalist politics hinged: the belief that, as Marine Le Pen put it, “the dividing line is [no longer] between left and right but globalists and patriots.” Even as he lashed out at his accusers and threatened to jail Clinton, Trump’s late-campaign speeches put his own stamp on this idea. As he told one rally: “There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. From now on, it’s going to be ‘America first.’” Anyone steeped in Guénon’s Traditionalism would recognize the terrifying specter Trump conjured of marauding immigrants, Muslim terrorists, and the collapse of national sovereignty and identity as the descent of a Dark Age—the Kali Yuga. For the millions who were not familiar with it, Trump’s apocalyptic speeches came across as a particularly forceful expression of his conviction that he understood their deep dissatisfaction with the political status quo and could bring about a rapid renewal. Whether it was a result of Trump’s apocalyptic turn, disgust at the Clintons, or simply accuser fatigue—it was likely a combination of all three—the pattern of slippage in the wake of negative news was less pronounced in Trump’s internal surveys in mid-October. Overall, he still trailed. But the data were noisy. In some states (Indiana, New Hampshire, Arizona) his support eroded, but in others (Florida, Ohio, Michigan) it actually improved. When Trump held his own at the third and final debate on October 19, the numbers inched up further. The movement was clear enough that Nate Silver and other statistical mavens began to take note of it. “Is the Presidential Race Tightening?” he asked in the title of an October 26 article. Citing Trump’s rising favorability numbers among Republicans and red-state trend lines, he cautiously concluded that probably it was. By November 1, he had no doubt. “Yes, Donald Trump Has a Path to Victory” read the headline for his column that day, in which he

In a speech to the American Medical Association, President Obama reiterated a promise that he has made repeatedly since the 2008 presidential campaign: No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.

As Elvin T. Lim noted in his 2002 study of presidential rhetoric, by the late 20th century, it was ‘‘all about the children,’’ with ‘‘Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton [making] 260 of the 508 references to children in the entire speech database, invoking the government’s responsibility to and concern for children in practically every public policy area.’’ Granted, George Washington had mentioned children in his seventh annual message, protesting ‘‘the frequent destruction of innocent women and children’’ by Indian marauders.107 But in the modern State of the Union address, references to children have a different tenor,

What he did was not perfect,” Romney said in an impassioned speech before the vote. “No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office I can imagine.” Just eight years earlier, Romney had been the Republican party’s presidential nominee—a split he spoke of in near-biblical terms. “I’m sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters,” he said. “Does anyone seriously believe that I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Woodrow Wilson tricked the nation into fighting a useless war and then used the war as an excuse for punishing speech critical of his administration with long jail terms. He seized private property without paying for it and even arrested a rival presidential candidate.

The Supreme Court was beyond their constitutional power when they handed George W. Bush the victory in 2000 by ruling that if all the votes were counted in Florida, as that state’s supreme court had ordered, it would “cause irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush].” They were beyond their constitutional power every single time they struck down a law passed by Congress and signed by the president over the years. And most important, the Supreme Court was way beyond their constitutional authority every single time they created out of whole cloth new legal doctrines, such as “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, “privacy” in Roe v. Wade, or “corporations are people” in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. But in the fine tradition of John Marshall, today’s Supreme Court wants you to believe that they are the über-overlords of our nation. They can make George W. Bush president, without any appeal. They can make money into speech, they can turn corporations into people, and the rest of us have no say in it. And they’re wrong. It’s not what the Constitution says, and it’s not what most of our Founders said. Which raises the question: If the Supreme Court can’t decide what is and what isn’t constitutional, then what is its purpose? What’s it really supposed to be doing? The answer to that is laid out in the Constitution in plain black-and-white. It’s the first court where the nation goes for cases involving disputes about treaties, ambassadors, controversies between two or more states, between a state and citizen of another state, between citizens of different states, and between our country and foreign states. Read Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution—it’s all there. Not a word in there about “judicial supremacy” or “judicial review”—the supposed powers of the court to strike down (or write) laws by deciding what is and what isn’t constitutional. President Thomas Jefferson was pretty clear about that—as were most of the Founders—and the court didn’t start seriously deciding “constitutionality” until after all of them were dead. But back in the day, here’s what Jefferson had to say: The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves… When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity.177 Their elective capacity? That’s a fancy presidential-founder way of saying that the people can toss out on their butts any member of Congress or any president who behaves in a way that’s unconstitutional. The ultimate remedy is with the people—it’s the ballot box. If we don’t like the laws being passed, then we elect new legislators and a new president. It’s pretty simple.

Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 presidential campaign, aggressively exploited the riots and fears of black crime, laying the foundation for the “get tough on crime” movement that would emerge years later. In a widely quoted speech, Goldwater warned voters, “Choose the way of [the Johnson] Administration and you have the way of mobs in the street.”41 Civil rights activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand. “If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality,” argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.42 While

Republicans accept as a well-documented fact of life that an overwhelming majority of the media is slanted against them.4 They take critical media coverage for granted. The Obama administration does not. So much so that harsh criticism by a news outlet is viewed as intolerable dissent. Moreover, this broadside from the president of the United States was not buttressed by facts. Pew Research Center found that from September 8 through October 16 of the 2008 campaign—the heat of the election cycle—40 percent of Fox News stories on then-Senator Obama were negative as were 40 percent of the network’s stories on Senator John McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent. You can’t get more fair and balanced than that. If you wanted to see bias against a candidate, CNN and MSNBC were better examples. Pew found that 61 percent of CNN’s stories on John McCain were negative, compared to only 39 percent of their Obama stories. The disparity was even greater at MSNBC where a mere 14 percent of Obama stories were negative, compared to a whopping 73 percent of McCain stories (and only 10 percent of MSNBC’s coverage of McCain was rated as positive). Overall, according to an October 2007 study of media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (funded by Pew) in collaboration with Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy, the press gave much more favorable coverage to Democratic candidates, noting, for example, that 46.7 percent of stories about Barack Obama had a positive tone, while only 12.4 percent of stories about John McCain did.5 Obama should have been counting his blessings, not complaining about the one news television outlet that wouldn’t fall in line. He had received, by some measures, the most laudatory press coverage of any senatorial or presidential candidate in recent history.6

William Wirt, first presidential candidate of the Anti-Masonic party was, in fact, a Freemason.  He even defended the order in his acceptance speech at the convention.

had delivered them flawlessly. After showing a quick excerpt from the Declaration of Independence about America pledging its sacred honor to help the victims and their families, the cameras would fade to the presidential seal and that would be it. Though the circumstances were horrible, the press secretary had always hoped he’d be given a chance to write a speech that would be remembered for eternity. He felt pretty confident this was going to be one of those speeches. What he didn’t know was that why it would be so well remembered was still yet to come. As the president came to the end of his remarks, he abandoned his script. “And to the terrorists responsible for this revolting act of cowardice, I say this. America will never stop until we have hunted every last one of you down. We will go to the far corners of the earth, draining every swamp and turning over every rock along the way. And when we find you—and we will find you—we shall use every means at our disposal to visit upon you a death one thousand times more hideous than that which you have delivered to our doorstep today. “America has defeated the greatest evils of the modern world and it will defeat the scourge of radical Islamic fanaticism as well. “Thank you and God bless America.” The red light atop the main camera switched off, but no one spoke. Not even the floor director, whose job it was to inform the president that they were safely off the air. “Am I clear?” asked Rutledge. The irony was not lost upon the director, who replied, “I’d say you were crystal clear, sir.” Knowing it would take several minutes for the technical people to pack up their equipment from the Oval Office, Chuck Anderson asked, “Mr. President, may I have a word, please, in my office?” Pointing at the press secretary, he added, “You too, Geoff.” Once they had gone through the adjoining door and it had closed firmly behind them, the chief of staff said, “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” “We’re not going to hide behind politically correct labels anymore, Chuck.” “I’d say you made that abundantly clear. Along with the fact that the Christian West is now officially

Barack Obama, in a 2007 stump speech for his nascent presidential campaign, had pledged, ‘No more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more National Security Letters to spy on American citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do no more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.

Writing is a solitary occupation, except for Presidential speeches and sitcoms.

To make matters worse, riots erupted in the summer of 1964 in Harlem and Rochester, followed by a series of uprisings that swept the nation following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. The racial imagery associated with the riots gave fuel to the argument that civil rights for blacks led to rampant crime. Cities like Philadelphia and Rochester were described as being victims of their own generosity. Conservatives argued that, having welcomed blacks migrating from the South, these cities “were repaid with crime-ridden slums and black discontent.”40 Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 presidential campaign, aggressively exploited the riots and fears of black crime, laying the foundation for the “get tough on crime” movement that would emerge years later. In a widely quoted speech, Goldwater warned voters, “Choose the way of [the Johnson] Administration and you have the way of mobs in the street.”41 Civil rights activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand. “If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality,” argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.42 While many civil rights advocates in this period

Or Scott Walker. The governor of Wisconsin is the new face in the Republican presidential race this year. He became famous with a rousing speech about how he stood up to his state’s public employees. So far, that’s pretty much the end of his persona. When he compared international terrorism to protesting union members, it may be because that’s the only crisis he knows about.

I was running a traditional presidential campaign with carefully thought-out policies and painstakingly built coalitions, while Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and relentlessly stoked Americans’ anger and resentment. I was giving speeches laying out how to solve the country’s problems. He was ranting on Twitter.

But the words that lingered longest in the public imagination were those from Romeo and Juliet, “When I think of President Kennedy,” Bobby said, “I think of what Shakespeare said … “‘When he shall die Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.’” The hall burst again into applause. In a hotel room off the boardwalk, O’Brien, O’Donnell, Salinger, and Dave Powers watched the proceedings on television and wept. Elsewhere, Johnson men chafed at Bobby’s reference to the “garish sun.” An obvious, petty jab, they said. It was just like Bobby. After the twenty-minute film, as the lights in the hall were raised, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson entered the presidential box in which Bobby and Ethel had watched the tribute. Delegates began to cheer; the organ began a rousing reprise of “Hello, Lyndon!” The president shook Bobby’s hand. As Bobby and Ethel stepped to the back of the box, Johnson generously beckoned them forward. They sat at Lady Bird’s side while the president, moments later, gave his acceptance speech. “Let us now turn to our task!” Johnson charged the convention hall crowd in a fervent thirty-five-minute speech. “Let us be on our way!

No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,” the Chinese president declared, in a none-too-subtle dig at his incoming American counterpart. Three days later in Washington, Trump delivered a shockingly combative inaugural address, condemning “other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.” Rather than embracing trade, Trump declared that “protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.” Xi’s speech was the sort of claptrap that global leaders were supposed to say when addressing business tycoons. The media fawned over his supposed defense of economic openness and globalization against populist shocks like Trump and Brexit. “Xi sounding rather more presidential than US president-elect,” tweeted talking-head Ian Bremmer. “Xi Jinping Delivers a Robust Defence of Globalisation,” reported the lead headline in the Financial Times. “World Leaders Find Hope for Globalization in Davos Amid Populist Revolt,” the Washington Post declared. “The international community is looking to China,” explained Klaus Schwab, the chair of the World Economic Forum.

It’s about planning how we WILL be, in the not-too-distant future. The next person who stands behind the presidential pulpit and gives a speech that enlivens the heart of the nation won’t be an old white man.

Dear friends, respected colleagues!” Nikonov said. “Three minutes ago Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America and I congratulate you on this.”1 Even though Nikonov did not add what many in the Kremlin already knew, his brief statement was greeted by enthusiastic applause. Donald J. Trump had just become Vladimir Putin’s man in the White House.

The next person who stands behind the presidential pulpit and gives a speech that enlivens the heart of the nation won’t be an old white man.

I long for time," he lamented in his journal, "to study agricultural chemistry and make experiments with soils and forces." Garfield finally got his wish during his presidential campaign. Although he argued that he should "take the stump and bear a fighting share in the campaign," traveling from town to town and asking for votes was considered undignified for a presidential candidate. Abraham Lincoln had not given a single speech on his own behalf during either of his campaigns, and Rutherford B. Hayes advised Garfield to do the same. "Sit crosslegged," he said, "and look wise." Happily left to his own devices, Garfield poured his time and energy into his farm.

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuits for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend. I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note that while, in this the Government's hour of trial, large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which

This “private person” with all the prestige of his powerful government behind him was engaged in extracting from Prague a series of concessions which would mean for all practical purposes the end of the republic and its democratic institutions. For one thing, they were to abolish free speech in the country—since it displeased Nazis to have Communists and Socialists and Jews telling the truth about what Nazis were doing. Also, the alliances with Russia and France were to be ended, and there were to be commercial treaties with Germany which would force Prague into economic dependence upon Berlin. These were the things the Nazis were determined upon having, and the noble English gentleman had given up his yachting at Cowes to come and make plain to a long-time ally of Britain that it had to surrender and become a slave of Germany.

Some conservative political strategists admitted that appealing to racial fears and antagonisms was central to this strategy, though it had to be done surreptitiously. H.R. Haldeman, one of Nixon's key advisers, recalls that Nixon himself deliverately pursued a Southern, racial strategy: 'He [President Nixon] emphasized that ou have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.' Similarly, John Erlichman, special counsel to the president, explained the Nixon administration's campaign strategy of 1968 in this way: 'We'll go after the racists.' In Erlichman's view, 'that subliminal appeal to the anti-black voter was always present in Nixon's statements and speeches.' Republican strategist Kevin Phillips is often credited for offering the most influential argument in favor of a race-based strategy for Republican political dominance in the South. He argued in The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969, that Nixon's successful presidential election campaign could point the way toward long-term political realignment and the building of a new Republican majority, if Republicans continued to campaign primarily on the basis of racial issues, using coded antiblack rhetoric.

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won’t promise that now. Yes, our path is harder – but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer – but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes...

she said. “They’re all worried about Iran.” By the time I took office, the theocratic regime in Iran had presented a challenge to American presidents for more than twenty years. Governed by radical clerics who seized power in the 1979 revolution, Iran was one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror. At the same time, Iran was a relatively modern society with a budding freedom movement. In August 2002, an Iranian opposition group came forward with evidence that the regime was building a covert uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, along with a secret heavy water production plant in Arak—two telltale signs of a nuclear weapons program. The Iranians acknowledged the enrichment but claimed it was for electricity production only. If that was true, why was the regime hiding it? And why did Iran need to enrich uranium when it didn’t have an operable nuclear power plant? All of a sudden, there weren’t so many complaints about including Iran in the axis of evil. In October 2003, seven months after we removed Saddam Hussein from power, Iran pledged to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing. In return, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France agreed to provide financial and diplomatic benefits, such as technology and trade cooperation. The Europeans had done their part, and we had done ours. The agreement was a positive step toward our ultimate goal of stopping Iranian enrichment and preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In June 2005, everything changed. Iran held a presidential election. The process was suspicious, to say the least. The Council of Guardians, a handful of senior Islamic clerics, decided who was on the ballot. The clerics used the Basij Corps, a militia-like unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, to manage turnout and influence the vote. Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Not surprisingly, he had strong support from the Basij. Ahmadinejad steered Iran in an aggressive new direction. The regime became more repressive at home, more belligerent in Iraq, and more proactive in destabilizing Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Afghanistan. Ahmadinejad called Israel “a stinking corpse” that should be “wiped off the map.” He dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth.” He used a United Nations speech to predict that the hidden imam would reappear to save the world. I started to worry we were dealing with more than just a dangerous leader. This guy could be nuts. As one of his first acts, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would resume uranium conversion. He claimed it was part of Iran’s civilian nuclear power program, but the world recognized the move as a step toward enrichment for a weapon. Vladimir Putin—with my support—offered to provide fuel enriched in Russia for Iran’s civilian reactors, once it built some, so that Iran would not need its own enrichment facilities. Ahmadinejad rejected the proposal. The Europeans also offered

President Obama wrote his own speeches. In a visit to a mosque in Baltimore he pitted his eloquence against the anti-Muslim demagoguery of Donald Trump, running for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election. The image Obama evoked was the parable of the Good Samaritan, but indirectly, and look how he did it in a single phrase, the moral thought fused by a gentle alliteration: “None of us can be silent. We can’t be bystanders to bigotry.

The Reichstag had two things to do: first, to hear him make a long speech, and second, to vote its endorsement of everything he had said. This vote never failed to be unanimous—since any member who presumed to voice disapproval would be sent off to a concentration camp before that afternoon’s sun had set.

He always delivered these tirades extemporaneously and had never yet been known to read a prepared speech. The

In God we trust” was first added to American coinage in 1863, during the height of the Civil War, seventy-five years after the Constitutional Convention. It was added to paper currency in 1955 and became the national motto in 1956. “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. The first president to close a speech with “God bless America” was Richard Nixon, in a mendacious presidential message about Watergate.

The Women’s March on January 21, 2017 was the biggest one-day political protest in this country’s history, and it was staged by angry women.29 At one of the only other comparable protests of a presidential inauguration, held at the height of the New Left, to protest the swearing-in of Richard Nixon in 1969, women in the movement had fought for space for two speakers, Marilyn Salzman Webb and Shulamith Firestone. As soon as Webb had begun to speak about abortion, childcare, and how men on the left treated women, the booing from the male crowd had drowned her out; Webb has recalled that “people were yelling ‘Take her off the stage and fuck her!’ and ‘Fuck her down a dark alley!’” She left the stage crying, and decades later she told the historian Annelise Orleck that that was when she knew that women “couldn’t build a coalition with the left; women’s liberation was going to be its own movement.”30 Firestone, who’d also been unable to give her speech in the face of booing from her ideological brethren, wrote more bluntly after the event: “Fuck off Left! We’re starting our own movement.”31

Voting is the best revenge.

Each time I visited the DPRK, I was shocked anew by their bastardization of the Korean language. Curses had taken root not only in their conversation and speeches but in their written language. They were everywhere—in poems, newspapers, in official Workers’ Party speeches, even in the lyrics of songs performed on this most hallowed day. It was like finding the words fuck and shit in a presidential speech or on the front page of the New York Times. Their spoken language was equally crude, no matter the occasion. For example, during the previous day’s speech, Lee Myung-bak and his administration were referred to as nom and paetguhri-dul (that bastard and his thugs). I was relieved that I did not hear my students speak Korean often enough to know whether they had inherited this legacy. Yet I would sometimes hear expressions that warmed my heart—archaic, innocent-sounding words that made me feel as though the entire country were a small village undisturbed by time. Instead of the prosaic soohwa, meaning sign language, North Koreans said “finger talk,” and instead of “developing photos” they said “images waking up,” which I found lovely and poetic.

an unlikely pair of guests: Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing UK Independence Party, and Phil Robertson, the bandanna’d, ayatollah-bearded Duck Dynasty patriarch who was accepting a free-speech award. CPAC is a beauty contest for Republican presidential hopefuls. But Robertson, a novelty adornment invited after A&E suspended him for denouncing gays, delivered a wild rant about beatniks and sexually transmitted diseases that had upstaged them all, to Bannon’s evident delight.