David Gergen President Quotations

I was in the Nixon White House during Watergate, and we pretended that we were all about business as usual. And we had a president who was talking to the portraits. It was not business as usual, but you have to say it.

I think the president has raised the stakes for himself. He has raised the stakes for his presidency, so that if there are more explosions in the next few months ... his approval ratings will suffer some more.

I still think this president would be served by having someone fresh come in. It would be a matter of making room at the table.

This story's going to have legs if somebody gets indicted. I think the president has to lance the boil directly?. It starts with facing reality, accepting your share of responsibility without blinking.

I think there's some generational difference between some of the older members of the press and this younger president [Bill Clinton]. I think the older members are not quite on the same wave length, and in general. I think it's been very devastating to the president.

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.

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.

I don't think there's any other president in the modern era that has seen this kind of stability.

You can second-guess this all you want ... but there's no question that the four days that elapsed that we had this mini-storm that blew up was embarrassing for the vice president and embarrassing for the president.