Richard Ben Cramer · 1072 pages
Rating: (1.9K votes)
“(Wide open! Some of these North Dakota towns made Russell, Kansas, look urban.)”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“If Steve Symms lost, it would turn the country over to liberals, to TEDDY KENNEDY!”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Reagan kept saying the deficit was Public Enemy Number One. But then he sent up a budget that would have pumped red ink up over the window sills.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“with loyalty oaths waving as weapons in the hands of the know-nothing right, the values of liberal education seemed to hang in the balance in 1952.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“They called in medics, but two got killed trying to get to Dole.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“In the bad old seventies, when Mondale was Veep, and the government still worried about things like fuel and noise, the Vice President flew on small, efficient DC-9S.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“But now, in the age of Reagan, Bush mostly flew a big old 707, the Stratoliner, a Cadillac-with-tailfins kind of plane, so heavy, noisy, and greedy for fuel that no commercial airline would be permitted to land one at an American airport.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Then he dipped his finger into Dole’s shredded jacket, and with Dole’s blood traced an “M” on his forehead. That’d let the medics know he’d had a shot—another would kill him, overdose ... if a medic ever got there ... if McBryar could spot one”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“A Governor could make all the difference in a state: KEAN: BUSH VISIT MEANS N.J. HAS A FRIEND IN WHITE HOUSE That would be the headline from Trenton, if the Governor, like Tom Kean, was a friend who’d billboard Bush’s day in the Garden State—his visit to that toxic-waste cleanup site, all the help he’d offered on that Superfund. ... Of course, if the Governor wasn’t a friend, then his appointed State Police Chief might find time to take a couple of press calls. ... That would be a different headline: BUSH VISIT WILL COST $200,000 IN OVERTIME”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“That’s what made it worse, in the end ... when he found out. Nixon had lied to him, personally.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Even a year later, Bush remarked to a friend, with uncharacteristic bluntness: “I wouldn’t care if I never see Richard Nixon again.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Yeah, they told me, just be yourself ... so I did. Maybe that was the problem.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Anyway, there were no bigger fans in town than Chet and Bub Dawson. (Chet was a diehard K-State fan. He’d claim: “If KU was playin’ Russia, I’d root for Russia.”)”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“The white men on the Brinkley set were trying not to grin, like cheap lawyers at a ten-car pileup: Uh, did that mean Senator Dole didn’t think all the facts were out? Didn’t he believe the White House, that North and Poindexter were the only ones who knew? The Bobster dropped an eyebrow and rasped: “Aghh, don’t think Ripley’d believe that.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“Anyway, the job didn’t call for deep thinking: if you thought too much, brought your insight and intellect to bear on the problems of the nation, you’d get out front of the President, or worse still, off to the side. That’s the surest way down the trash chute in the White House. There’s only one question that the Vice President needs to ask: “What’s the President saying on this?” Anything else is begging for trouble, and George Bush had brains enough to figure that out.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“In fact, Reagan couldn’t remember his grandchildren’s names, and he had no friends, only the husbands of Nancy’s friends.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“George Bush knew five times more about the governments of the world—his own included—than Ronald Reagan ever would.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“The ministerial students were the worst—they were maybe one-third to one-half of each class, and this was their trade school. They came to learn the right words, all the proper formulae ... which they wrote down and memorized from the lectures of their profs.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“And there’d be no point: Why would he give his life over to this, if it were not for the notion that he could do something great?”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
Richard Ben Cramer
Born place: in Rochester, New York, The United States
Born date June 12, 1950
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“How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?”
― Sebastian Junger, quote from The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
“I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebody, to anybody. I know that even as the words of George Wallace rang through my Alabama, the black family who lived down the dirt road from our house sent fresh-picked corn and other food to the poor white lady and her three sons, because they knew their daddy had run off, because hungry does not have a color.”
― Rick Bragg, quote from All Over But the Shoutin'
“I really wish I could confirm to him
that you do in fact have a penis. A very
big and pretty penis,” Blaire whispered.
I winced.
“Please, just call it big.
Don’t call it pretty. That hurts its
feelings.”
― Abbi Glines, quote from Forever Too Far
“Now look: Droplets of oil were dotted across the front of her best dress, over the mound of her stomach. She was clumsy and fat-stomached and she didn't even have the sense to wear an apron while she was cooking. Also she had paid way too much for this dress, sixty-four dollars at Hecht's, which would scandalize Ira if he knew. How could she have been so greedy? She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Took a deep breath. Well. Anyhow.”
― Anne Tyler, quote from Breathing Lessons
“Your mind is a treasure house that you should stock well and it’s the one part of you the world can’t interfere with.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
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