Stephen Hess
Stephen Hess
Stephen H. Hessis a senior fellow emeritus in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He studies media, the U.S. presidency, political dynasties and the U.S. government. He first joined Brookings in 1972 and was distinguished research professor of media and public affairs at the George Washington University. He served on Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon's White House staff and as an adviser to Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter...
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Very early on, she will work out her sound bite, and that will be her sound bite. And she will not deviate from that, so after a while, that will lose its sting.
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Cindy Sheehan had one glorious shining moment and she took advantage of it and the peace movement took advantage of her as it created the attention that the movement hadn't had previously.
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But it's embarrassing when they're caught at it. This time, we caught them leaking from the top.
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I gather that there are drifts in different races. I don't see any great breeze bowing all the races in any one direction.
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By never having used a veto, either everything has gone his way--which is never true in this world--or he's been able to reach an agreement. When politics gets into this range of right and wrong, religion and morality, it is increasingly difficult to compromise.
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If she had just gone home I think she would have been remembered importantly, but she didn't just go home.
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There has been so much game-playing on her behalf, ... Suddenly, Texas judges are popping up out of the ether to defend her, and she seems to have a gentleman caller who speaks on her behalf, and on and on.
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Whenever a president is in trouble, as this one is, the pundits and observers in Washington say, 'Don't just stand there, do something.' So they give a speech -- he's done that. They appoint a blue-ribbon commission -- he's done that. They change personnel -- they are doing that. The point is, that is not what really ails this administration. They've got a policy problem, and either they can change the policy or they have to hope the policy starts working better for them.
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The president looks across the cabinet table at the vice president and has to realize, 'The only reason he's there is in case I die.
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But life did not work quite as he designed it in the next year. He picked the wrong major item, Social Security. And then the war got worse and he had the hurricane. So now it's not only the sand that has run out of the hourglass but also the political capital has run out of the bank.
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The party needs him and, for all I know, the nation needs him. There hasn't been an African-American Democrat who has had an appeal broadly beyond his ethnic group.
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The president was still Ike, and the presidency went on.
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If it were an ordinary year, a traditional year, sort of a simple first year of a president's second term, you would have to say he had a pretty good year.
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The president has made it very clear: no looking back, no regrets. He feels this was the right thing to do.