that quality in me. And I know it wasn’t only logic that made me think: I’m never going to write about a crucial election, a pivotal moment in my sub… - Robert A. Caro

Anyone who held that belief, as Richard Rovere was to explain in The New Yorker, “forgot the wisdom of history, which is that members of the United States Senate almost invariably come to grief when they try to win Presidential nominations for themselves or to manipulate national conventions for any purpose whatsoever. For many reasons — patronage is one, and control of delegations is another — the big men at conventions are governors and municipal leaders.

I would rather link my name indelibly with the living pulsing history of my country and not be forgotten entirely after a while than to have anything else on earth,

President Kennedy’s eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson’s hammer blows are designed to make men act.