Sublime

As Murray Kempton put it, Ike would not have trusted Dulles “with a stick of dynamite to blow up a duck pond,” but found him useful for clearing minefields.

You must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out what’s true.

Judgment—especially demonstrated judgment, with high accountability and a clear track record—is critical. [78]

One of Jack Kennedy’s most impressive characteristics was an ability to observe—and to generalize from his observations, to understand the implications of what he was seeing—no matter how hectic his pace might be: to “learn on the run,” as one of his aides would put it. And as he raced back and forth across the United States in 1957, and continued

“The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.”—John Rawls

Rayburn would say, “I’m not for sale”—and then he would walk away without a backward glance, as he had walked away from a President. His integrity was certified by his bankbook. At his death, at the age of seventy-nine, after decades as one of the most powerful men in the United States, a man courted by railroad companies and oil companies, his sav