This is pretty neat: a list of (most) of the bibles (or in Truman’s case, ‘a book’) that presidents used when taking the oath. Also includes some of the verses. Apparently FDR was really into love.
Josh's blog
Posts tagged president
“ When you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot… And so if your main argument for how to grow the economy is ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you’re missing what this job is about. ”
— President Obama on why Mitt Romney’s record in the private sector matters (via barackobama)
“ Comparing oneself to Carter is for no good reason a dangerous thing to do for a president. You know, Carter is the thing you don’t want to be. You know, I think that’s wrong — but it’s just the way it is. ”
— Ron Suskind on telling President Obama he’s like Jimmy Carter
(Source: c-spanvideo.org)
“ Frankly, it scares the hell out of me. ”
— Barry Goldwater on how he would feel if he became president
(Source: Washington Post)
“A pattern has emerged: Even when the administration should have the better argument, the Republicans often win the narrative, starting with their initial success in defining Obama as a traditional big-spending liberal.
Sure, these are unusually tough times, yet successful presidents who faced equal or greater challenges ranging from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Reagan still managed to shape the agenda and dominate the discussion.
Unless the 44th president can start emulating those successes, re-election may be an uphill battle.
”
— Al Hunt
(Source: bloomberg.com)
“In May, Mr. Bush declined Mr. Obama’s invitation to join him at ground zero after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. But on this morning, they stood shoulder to shoulder — commanders in chief whose terms in office are bookends for exploring how the United States has changed since Sept. 11, 2001, particularly in its response to terrorism.
The tableau was striking: the president who spent years hunting Bin Laden next to the one who finally got him. The president defined by his response to Sept. 11 standing alongside the one who has tried to take America beyond the lingering, complicated legacy of that day.
Mr. Obama read from Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength,” which an aide said he chose because it spoke of perseverance. Mr. Bush, the wartime leader, read a letter from Abraham Lincoln to a widow who was believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War.
Unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Bush drew a cheer from those who remembered him shouting through a bullhorn atop the smoldering rubble. For Mr. Obama, Sept. 11 is perhaps a less wrenching experience, though it underpins what has become one of the great paradoxes of his presidency.
He is a Democratic leader who opposed the Iraq war and is pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan but has, at the same time, notched up a record as a lethal, relentless hunter of terrorists.
He is a president who banned torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists and pledged (unsuccessfully, so far) to close the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but carried out more drone strikes in Pakistan in his first year in office than Mr. Bush did in his eight years.
”
— The New York Times: “Bush and Obama: Side by Side at Ground Zero”
(Source: The New York Times)
“ An army, a movie theater, a weekend retreat, a helicopter, a jet airplane, and they always play a song when you walk in the room. ”
— Bill Clinton on the perks of the presidency
(Source: NPR)
