David Gergen
David Gergen
David Richmond Gergenis an American political commentator and former presidential advisor who served during the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. He is currently a Senior Political Analyst for CNN and a Professor of Public Service and Co-Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Gergen is also the former Editor-at-Large of U.S. News and World Report and a contributor to CNN.com and Parade Magazine. He has twice been a member...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Show Host
Date of Birth9 May 1942
CountryUnited States of America
We know that second terms have historically been marred by hubris and by scandal.
For a two-term president after the November elections in the middle of your second term, things start going downhill and you really do start quacking like a duck.
It's devastating that the president would ask no questions. If he sat there mum in a full briefing ... that will only confirm the suspicions of a lot of opponents.
It's as if he's trying to have it both ways.
It was a sluggish response, almost a White House in slow motion. Americans expect not only to see their president on the scene, but a firm hand on the tiller. That wasn't there. There was nobody in charge.
It's clear they are bringing in someone to do better marketing. Whether they are bringing in someone to bring more complete information to the public is very much an open question.
We've seen the hubris. And now we're seeing the scandals.
When he hung up on Nancy Reagan, that's when he crossed his final threshold.
Yes, it absolutely suggests that. It sounds to me... as if they had a negotiation between the agency and the NSC over what they were going to say, that the CIA objected strenuously to the idea of asserting it on the basis of U.S. intelligence, and when the NSC came back and said, let's blame it on them, let's attribute it to the British, the CIA, well, on that basis, on part of our negotiation, we withdraw our formal objection. And Condi Rice is saying, he didn't object, therefore, we didn't take it out.
One cannot underestimate how widely admired Tom Daschle is in Washington for his integrity.
It’s easy to confuse motion with progress.
Ronald Reagan is clearly to television what Franklin Roosevelt was to radio.
Morality in government begins with officials using words as honestly as possible to describe the truth.
There's a normal tendency in the campaign, during a crisis, for the country to rally around the White House. That may help Al Gore in this campaign, but on the other hand, George W. Bush handled himself so well the other night on foreign policy that I think it fortified him just before this crisis broke.