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The people can never understand why the President does not use his powers to make them behave. Well all the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
--
Letter to Mary Jane Truman (14 November 1947)

 

Harry S. Truman

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I for one don't even believe that he's president. In order to have a president you need to have an election, in order to have an election you have to have a choice, and if you remember back to the primaries there were people running against the war, Kennedy and McCarthy. They often got 85 to 90% of the votes, but when it came time for the parties, that was totally ignored, so in point of fact, there really was no election. For a man who's always wanted to be president, and now that he's president, he's not even president.

 

Phil Ochs

 

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress.

 

Joseph (Joe) Biden

 

Today President Bush has failed the American people and especially people of color. Despite the lip service he and his party have given in recent weeks to building racial unity, his latest action seeks to perpetuate the current effects of past discrimination. ... President Bush's decision to join this misguided attempt to resegregate our public institutions is regrettable.

 

Jim Clyburn

 

We have a constitution, where it is plainly stated, that a person can serve as president for two consecutive terms. That doesn’t mean never afterwards. After four years he is welcome to try to run for president again. And mind, when I told this a major American figure just the other day, he said: “Your constitution is right, and ours is wrong, because we have it thus: two terms, that’s it, and never again. For instance, if we had it as in your constitution, now Bill Clinton would stand for president, and he would have won.” And basically I think that this is the right viewpoint, because if after a four-year break a person can be elected once more, well, obviously, he deserves it, that’s what I make of it. After all, four years is a big stretch of time. So, I guess president Putin shares this viewpoint as well. That is why he does not alter the constitution, he firmly refuses to do so. I am sorry to say that not all people share this viewpoint. Well, Nikita Mikhalkov, for one, or Zurab Tsereteli, who wrote to president and by that said to him, as it were: don’t you care for that constitution, change it, then go ahead and stay for third term. And speaker of Federation Council, head of “Spravedlivaya Rossiya” party Sergey Mironov is expostulating with president on not altering, but outskirting the constitution, and still staying for third term.

 

Vladimir Posner

 

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference—and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

 

John F. Kennedy