“Chess masters don’t evaluate all the possible moves. They know how to discard 98 percent of the ones they could make and then focus on the best choice of the remaining lot. That’s the way expertise works in other fields, too: Wise practitioners recognize familiar patterns and put their creativity, improvisation, and skill toward the marginal cases.”
― John Dickerson
“The walls of our upstairs hallway testify that we once had photogenic children. There are rows of framed pictures that show them playing baseball, basketball, holding a toad, and smiling in the sunlight at their eager parents. Everything is orderly and bright.”
― John Dickerson
“One of the great things about children is that they have no other concern than to be simply interested in things. It is considered by some the height of mindfulness to approach the world afresh like a child.”
― John Dickerson
“The culture of undermining sends signals of disrespect. This approach not only saps motivation and undermines teamwork, it also lowers the motivation to work extra hours anticipating what can go wrong.”
― John Dickerson
“Politics is not the nicest business, but there are still times when people do the right thing.”
― John Dickerson
“A number of Donald Trump’s supporters told me during the campaign they had faith that he would be a good president because he would be helped by the experts around him. But the president’s improvisation saps experts of their key skill: pattern recognition.”
― John Dickerson
“Claims of a decisive ‘turning point’ in any election are often overblown – more often, such a moment merely crystallizes a change that’s been days or weeks in the making. But you can make a real case that Obama’s Jefferson-Jackson Day speech is a pivot point in America history.”
― John Dickerson
“The 2008 battle in Iowa for the Democratic caucus was perhaps the most titanic single nominating contest in the history of modern politics.”
― John Dickerson
“I’ve talked to several who have been approached for short- or long-term duty in the Trump administration. The evidence of the work environment that mounts with each passing day makes them highly wary.”
― John Dickerson
“One of the things that voters have said about Donald Trump, since he has no government experience, is that he will be able to surround himself with good advisers.”
― John Dickerson
“One of the worries about a presidency is that everybody tells you yes. Nobody helps you figure out where your blind spots are.”
― John Dickerson
“The house was big enough for my brother and me to have firecracker wars at one end and leave Mom and Dad undisturbed at the other. When firecrackers weren’t available, we attacked each other with pennies and marbles and clumps of Crisco, which made brilliant greasy asterisks when you missed and hit the wall.”
― John Dickerson
“To be the windowpane – this is basically a bastardization of what Orwell said about good writing – so you can get the conversation going and frame it the right way and make sure people aren’t lost. And then you let the candidates illuminate the issues themselves.”
― John Dickerson
“CBS’s Major Garrett writes in ‘National Journal’ about a new version of the ‘stray voltage’ theory of communication in which the president purposefully overstates his case knowing that it will create controversy.”
― John Dickerson
“An old theory holds that air conditioning ruined Congress. Members no longer had to flee the Washington heat to spend the summer back home. The long vacation forced them to bond with their constituents.”
― John Dickerson
“Mr. Obama said that he personally told Mr. Putin to knock it off and vows to retaliate. But the Obama presidency is coming to an end, and his successor still won’t accept that Russia is guilty of tampering with U.S. elections.”
― John Dickerson
“Things were so unpredictable in Comey’s first meeting with President-elect Trump, the former FBI director immediately took notes in his car after the interaction.”
― John Dickerson
“Comey worried that the pressure from Trump to end the Flynn investigation or remove the ‘cloud’ of the larger investigation would ‘infect’ the investigation if he let others working on the case know about it. You don’t need to believe the particulars of each exchange to see that this mode of management was not productive to a larger purpose.”
― John Dickerson
“Mother’s Day is a welcome event in partisan times. Nearly everyone agrees that we should show mothers gratitude.”
― John Dickerson
“When she died, Mom left me her letters and journals. Windows into things I would have been too young to understand when she was alive, or too busy, or too much of a know-it-all.”
― John Dickerson
“In the modern presidency, the Chief Executive is expected to respond to anxious national moments with words that stabilize the country. President Trump chose a different route. He did not give a stirring speech of unity or create a national gathering point around common ideals. He spent his passion on other things.”
― John Dickerson
“A campaign gives you focus. You wake up to a different hotel alarm clock every day, but you know your mission.”
― John Dickerson
“When the campaign ends, and you are home, the alarm clock is the same, but you don’t know where to start after it goes off: expense reports, new stories, the crusted paint cans that have to go to the hazardous-waste disposal site, the wiper blade on the Honda that has gone droopy.”
― John Dickerson
“You lose yourself in the to-do list and never tackle those big things you promised you would when the campaign came to an end.”
― John Dickerson
“When the kids were young, they just wanted to be around us. We were units of comfort and support. As they get older, we work the turnstile, helping the exasperated customer pass whatever temporary obstacle is keeping them from their next exciting thing. Now we’re the ones who just like having them in the room.”
― John Dickerson
“Barack Obama’s convention speech in 2004 had made him a political star, and he arrived in Iowa to crowds unseen in caucus history.”
― John Dickerson
“In the end, Obama won, stealing the change message from John Edwards and beating back Hillary Clinton’s focus on experience. And the race turned on a remarkable speech Obama gave on the night of Nov. 10, 2007, in Des Moines.”
― John Dickerson
“When I was first asked to be on ‘Washington Week’, I never prepared more for an appearance.”
― John Dickerson
“The Chinese, our allies, have been allies with North Korea.”
― John Dickerson
“Presidents have to learn how to adapt. Every president comes into the job; it’s different than they expect. They must adapt.”
― John Dickerson
“People out there with pre-existing conditions, they are worried. Are they going to have the guarantee of coverage if they have a pre-existing condition or if they live in a state where the governor decides that’s not a part of the health care, or that the prices are going to go up? That’s the worry.”
― John Dickerson
“Inaugural speeches are supposed to be huge and stirring. Presidents haul our heroes onstage, from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. George W. Bush brought the Liberty Bell. They use history to make greatness and achievements seem like something you can just take down from the shelf.”
― John Dickerson
“In order for a president to be transformational, the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves.”
― John Dickerson
“In the 2012 campaign, the president successfully transformed the most intense conservative positions into liabilities on immigration and the role of government.”
― John Dickerson
“Mitt Romney won the GOP nomination on a platform of ‘self-deportation’ for illegal immigrants – and the Obama team never let Hispanics forget it. The Obama campaign also branded Republicans with Romney’s ill-chosen words about 47 percent of Americans as the party of uncaring millionaires.”
― John Dickerson
“My instincts for asking questions is to press but not to be a jerk about it.”
― John Dickerson
“Mom would talk about Eric Sevareid and Murrow and Howard K. Smith the way other parents talk about sports figures.”
― John Dickerson
“That’s what politics is. It’s the story of what’s happening, what does it mean, what’s the conclusion, who are the interesting characters?”
― John Dickerson
“One of the roles of the press is to make sure that the president, in the voice of the people, is telling the truth.”
― John Dickerson
“Politicians have done some grim things in pursuit of the office. President Franklin Roosevelt was a philanderer; nevertheless, he pushed aides to use his opponent Wendell Wilkie’s affairs to hurt him. He even tutored aides on how to spread rumors without getting caught.”
― John Dickerson
“Would most politicians have gone to a meeting with someone advertised as being an agent of the Russian government?”
― John Dickerson
“In 2008, Senator John McCain forbid his staff from using an ad that referred to his opponent Barack Obama’s inflammatory former pastor Jeremiah Wright or from raising that issue in any other way. He believed it was a sneaky way to use Obama’s race against him.”
― John Dickerson
“There is no human-resources training for how to respond when you work for an unpredictable president. It’s perhaps fitting that when you visit the website of the White House Office of Administration it says, ‘Check back soon for more information.’”
― John Dickerson
“If people feel like the boss doesn’t respect them, they don’t stretch for the boss.”
― John Dickerson
“I believe that Jesus Christ existed and that He died for my sins. And I believe that what He said in the Gospels is a model for the way I should try to lead my life and that I will always fall short of that and, therefore, need Him to redeem me.”
― John Dickerson
“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
― John Dickerson
“The most important connection I can see between my faith and my work is that in the progress of my day, I try to be restrained and mindful of every person’s humanity and of the overwhelming challenge of pride.”
― John Dickerson
“I believe in Jesus Christ.”
― John Dickerson
“The swashbuckling independence of my childhood was not all good, and as a father, I’m puzzling out how to be part of my children’s lives rather than shoehorning them into mine. But there’s a risk that I’ll overcompensate, of course.”
― John Dickerson
“I couldn’t wait to get out, and at 14, I moved into a three-room Georgetown town house with Dad. I never went back. When they eventually sold the house, in 1984, Mom had a goodbye party for ‘Merrywood.’ I refused to go.”
― John Dickerson
“My mother, Nancy Dickerson, was a reporter for CBS and NBC and the first female star of television news; my father, Wyatt Dickerson, was a successful businessman. Their parties, from the ’60s to the ’80s, attracted cabinet officials, movie stars, and presidents.”
― John Dickerson
“President-elect Trump says he’s not even sure the Russians did the hacking.”
― John Dickerson
“President-elect Donald Trump says he’s looking for a simple plan for defeating ISIS within his first 30 days of taking office. But even as ISIS has suffered setbacks in Iraq and Syria, its violent ideology continues to spread.”
― John Dickerson
“George W. Bush said the reason the Oval Office is round is there are no corners you can hide in.”
― John Dickerson
“Every president makes the Oval Office theirs.”
― John Dickerson
“Michael Flynn was forced to resign, we are told, because he told a big lie. But what about the little ones?”
― John Dickerson
“A president cannot grow a long-term lack of trust in someone with whom they had full confidence the day before.”
― John Dickerson
“If Michael Flynn lost his job because of a gradual erosion of trust, shouldn’t the easy and frequent production of official statements that are so many connecting flights from the truth also be concerning?”
― John Dickerson
“What is the appetite for truth in the Trump White House? That’s not a question about the untrue things the president says. It’s about the level of truth the system expects.”
― John Dickerson
“When the news broke that John McCain had been diagnosed with brain cancer, the outpouring of well wishes all hailed his toughness.”
― John Dickerson
“The math of durability in McCain’s life is extraordinary.”
― John Dickerson
“There is a basic idea to this fighting spirit: that there are standards worth devoting yourself to that are more important than your self-interest.”
― John Dickerson
“In addition to surviving the Forrestal, McCain has survived three other plane disasters, including being shot down over enemy territory.”
― John Dickerson
“Talking to the press is not always good.”
― John Dickerson
“When I interviewed John McCain in 2000 about whether he had taken medication for his anger, I remember thinking, ‘Let’s see how this is going to work.’”
― John Dickerson
“There’s the human side of people who are in public life that connects people. Whether it’s favorable or unfavorable, it gives them some connection with the person who’s onstage, and I think those connections are edifying.”
― John Dickerson
“Not everybody gets a chance to go fly around the country and spend time in places with people who aren’t like them, where, again and again, you realize we’re all generally alike.”
― John Dickerson
“During the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton ran a blunt television ad asking whether Barack Obama could handle a foreign policy crisis.”
― John Dickerson
“When former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote his recent book, ‘Duty’, it was full of tough assessments and candor.”
― John Dickerson
“If we practice hard enough, we can become thoroughly interested in even the simplest things of daily life, the way a child would. The smallest things would become so meaningful, they might even be worth a few words or a photograph, whatever method you use to capture them.”
― John Dickerson
“I am always looking for material – whether for my notebooks or for Twitter or Instagram – which means I’m looking for meaning.”
― John Dickerson
“If you have children and want to give your future self a present, record their laughter as toddlers. When they’re older and away from you, you might find that clip in the middle of the day, and it will transport you as surely as if you had a time machine.”
― John Dickerson
“One of the ways usually that you build a bipartisan agreement is one side gives up a little, and the other side gives up a little.”
― John Dickerson
“We’ve seen, in Washington, both sides say they don’t want to give up much of anything.”
― John Dickerson
“There are a lot of plans out there for fixing health care.”
― John Dickerson
“You’re basically like glass: People see the candidates through you.”
― John Dickerson
“The goal of the moderator is to illuminate the views of the candidates on the issues that matter the most to voters, and you don’t need to be on the side of the party to do that.”
― John Dickerson
“For Hillary Clinton, Iowa was a tough state for her in 2008, and she’s put a lot of effort into fixing those mistakes.”
― John Dickerson
“There’s kind of a Tom Harkin aspect to Bernie Sanders, even though Harkin is supporting Secretary Clinton.”
― John Dickerson
“Some of us do talk about women like objects, which dehumanizes them.”
― John Dickerson
“The locker rooms that Donald Trump is in are not at the cut-rate gym with the broken treadmills – they are at his swish golf clubs. They are places of stature.”
― John Dickerson
“Using the term ‘locker room talk’ blurs the line between what is criminal and what is simply oafish. That’s not a line anyone should want blurred.”
― John Dickerson
“Expectations shouldn’t be lowered, even if Donald Trump was just telling stories to impress the crowd around him and never grabbed as many women as he suggested. Lower the bar for what you can talk about, and you lower the bar for what is acceptable behavior.”
― John Dickerson
“Officials in every White House crowbar the facts to make their cases.”
― John Dickerson
“After President Obama took office, his campaign book ‘The Audacity of Hope’ receded into his past fast. Its sweet, naive, bipartisan ‘let’s reason together’ passages fell away, too.”
― John Dickerson
“Campaigns maybe encourage us to pay attention to attributes that maybe aren’t that important in the presidency.”
― John Dickerson
“The challenge with Donald Trump is that he’ll deny things he said the day before or even in the same interview. And then sometimes when you try and talk about a fact that he misstated or something that he said out loud that he now disagrees with himself on, it’s very frustrating.”
― John Dickerson
“In 1840, William Henry Harrison is the first one to really campaign as a candidate, and the campaigns were totally frivolous. I mean, people were drinking hard cider all day. They were big parades; no one was debating the issues.”
― John Dickerson
“It’s hard to say what the Founding Fathers would think of the modern presidency.”
― John Dickerson
“In their day, no man worthy of the presidency would ever stoop to campaigning for it. George Washington was asked to serve. Decades later, his successors were also expected to sit by the phone.”
― John Dickerson
“Today, campaigning isn’t an ‘interruption’ but a permanent condition. Indeed, if you are a successful campaigner, it’s expected you’ll be a successful president.”
― John Dickerson
“When Barack Obama was asked about his lack of executive experience in 2008, he pointed to his successful campaign as proof he could manage the presidency.”
― John Dickerson
“My children are vampires. I don’t mean that they are going to dress as vampires for Halloween. I mean that, like vampires, they cannot be captured on film.”
― John Dickerson
“A picture excites the love of parenting that comes through meditation on a child.”
― John Dickerson
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