First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington.

We [the United States] are the world's only superpower right now, so everyone notices every bit of what we do or don't do.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

Legacy is what a president does that affects later generations.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.

We cannot be spun, or at least we'd like to think that we cannot be. And the presidents who are trying to - too overtly to try to say, here is what you historians and what you later Americans should think of my presidency, 30 or 40 years later, they look silly.

As parties began to develop around the turn of the 19th century, you had party nominees for President nominated in caucuses made up of party members in Congress.

I'm defining [presidential courage] pretty narrowly. It's not only taking a big political risk but it's also the risk that in the hindsight of history, people think it's wise.

The point is that you see candidates running in these different kinds of contests. A primary shows you something that's different from a state party convention, which shows you something that is different than what a caucus shows you.

You have to raise $100 million, probably, to be serious.

As you look back in history, we [the United States] have done wonderful things, the Marshal Plan is the most obvious. After World War II, we spent billions of dollars to rebuild Europe or at least part of Europe after the devastation of World War II. We did it out of charity, but we also did it to keep the Russians from getting deeply into Europe.

Roosevelt understands that there are things that are worth surrendering your career for, like defending the country against [Adolf] Hitler.

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.