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Reagan survived the Iran-Contra scandal because the elements of it that were illegal (aiding anti-communist Nicaraguans) were popular and the things that were unpopular (arming the Iranians) were quite legal.

David Frum

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David Frum
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 30
Blogger
Journalist
Lawyer
Novelist
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City of Toronto
David Jeffrey Frum
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Life, as the signs in the liquor stores say, is too short to drink bad wine. And summer is too short to read bad books.
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World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.
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One of the questions I often get asked is, Were you surprised that Trump won? I always answer the same way: I was surprised, I am surprised and I will never stop being surprised.
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The system has evolved to protect parties from people like Donald Trump. It really is true that people without well-established public records, without proven capability in public service, without tested beliefs and at least apparently under the influence of a foreign power, such people are screened out by major parties.
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[In politics,] when there is no reason to speak, there is a reason not to speak.
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Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.
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Democracy requires you to learn how to lose as well as how to exercise power when you win. And that requires restraint all around. One of the reasons it works is because when you win you don't do things that are so upsetting to the losers that they feel like they have less, they have more to gain by turning over the system.
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Canada has a real civil service, which the United States doesn't have, an independent civil service. Canada also has a stronger federal system.
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One of the things you can learn from a figure like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is that if you take all the resources of the state for yourself, you don't build much of a constituency and you have to rely on repression, and repression is difficult in the modern world.
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Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?
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In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.
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Americans are about to discover that their system is more vulnerable than they thought. There's a lot of complacency in American politics, there's a lot of complacency in advanced democracies generally.
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Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry.
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Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.
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[democrats] hated Richard Nixon, and no wonder. It was Nixon who sent Alger Hiss to jail, and Nixon who waged the Vietnam War after the Democrats gave up.
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The habit of going to your congressman's town hall and asking questions, that's powerful in a way that shouting slogans or getting arrested is not, that is completely counterproductive.
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Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.
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Donald Trump is not supposed to save jobs one by one. He's supposed to build a sound macro economy in which private enterprises create jobs.
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Civil unrest, civil turmoil is not a challenge to President Trump. It's a resource for him. He needs to create an image of a polarized country in which the people who are against him are somehow alien or anti-system.
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