“ In Ronald Reagan's chaotic childhood, the imagination was armor. There is nothing unusual about that; transcending the doubts, hesitations, and fears swirling around you by casting yourself internally… Rick Perlstein
“ Stories are "how we organize the chaos of experience into the order we require just a carry-on." Joan Gideon Rick Perlstein
“ Whatever you think about his intelligence, what's unquestionable is that Reagan had extraordinary emotional intelligence. He could sense the temperature of a room, and tell them a story and make them… Rick Perlstein
“ There's no question that Kennedy was an utter failure as a passer of laws during his proverbial thousand days. Rick Perlstein
“ Everyone on the Left has a favorite story that allows them to kind of excuse Reagan, explain away Reagan, say he was dumb, but unless we reckon with that kind of emotional intelligence and his ability… Rick Perlstein
“ Liberals tend to stress how marvelous education is, in and of itself, and also adore it as a vessel for genuine equality. (That's me, by the way: Hell, I think we should be spending $50 billion a year… Rick Perlstein
“ Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it). Rick Perlstein
“ Leaders are for calling people to their better angels, for helping guide them to a kind of sterner, more mature sense of what we need to do. To me, Reagan's brand of leadership was what I call 'a litu… Rick Perlstein
“ History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spu… Rick Perlstein
“ Prediction is structurally inseparable from the business of punditry: It creates the essential image of indefatigable authority that is punditry's very architecture; it flows from that calcified image… Rick Perlstein
“ Look at liberty's greatest historic advances: ending slavery. Giving women the vote. Outlawing legal segregation. Each and every time, the people at the forefront of advancing those reforms - often pu… Rick Perlstein
“ Reagan's emotional intelligence, his ability to suss out people's longings and to channel them for political purposes, was better than just about any human being that ever lived. Rick Perlstein
“ Goldwater hardly ever mentioned a statistic. He hardly ever used it EXAMPLE. He presumed you already knew what he meant. Reagan SHOWED you. Rick Perlstein
“ Richard Nixon's conversation was "loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his… Rick Perlstein
“ A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman. Rick Perlstein
“ Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it. Rick Perlstein
