People From Illinois

"Then there was the ultra-sensitive intelligence gained through the Special Access Programs South Korea allowed the U.S. to run. Trump seemed not to comprehend the value and the necessity. "Like $3.5 billion, 28,000 troops," the president said. He was really hot. "I don't know why they're there. Let's bring them all home!" "So, Mr. President," Cohn said, "what would you need in the region to sleep well at night?" "I wouldn't need a fucking thing," the president said. "And I'd sleep like a baby." Priebus called an end to the meeting. Mattis seemed completely deflated. Trump got up and walked out. All the air seemed to have gone out of Tillerson. He could not abide Trump's attack on the generals. The president was speaking as if the U.S. military was a mercenary force for hire. If a country wouldn't pay us to be there, then we didn't want to be there. As if there were no American interests in forging and keeping a peaceful world order, as if the American organizing principle was money. "Are you okay?" Cohn asked him. "He's a fucking moron," Tillerson said so everyone heard."

"White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who was a commander in the Naval Reserves, tried several times to persuade Mattis to appear on Sunday talk shows on behalf of the administration. The answer was always no. "Sean," Mattis finally said, "I've killed people for a living. If you call me again, I'm going to fucking send you to Afghanistan. Are we clear?""

"Mattis still saw Iran as the key destabilizing influence in the region. In private, he could be pretty hard-line, but he had mellowed. Push them back, screw with them, drive a wedge between them and the Russians, but no war. Russia had privately warned Mattis that if there was a war in the Baltics, Russia would not hesitate to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO. Mattis, with agreement from Dunford, began saying that Russia was an existential threat to the United States. Mattis had formed a close relationship with Tillerson. They tried to have lunch most weeks. Mattis's house was near the State Department and several times Mattis told his staff, "I'll walk down and say hello to him." McMaster considered Mattis and Tillerson "the team of two" and found himself outside their orbit, which was exactly the way they wanted it."

"In 2016, candidate Trump gave Bob Costa and myself his definition of the job of president: "More than anything else, it's the security of our nation... That's number one, two and three... The military, being strong, not letting bad things happen to our country from the outside. And I certainly think that's always going to be my number-one part of that definition." The reality was that the United States in 2017 was tethered to the words and actions of an emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader. Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president's most dangerous impulses. It was a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world. What follows is that story."

"In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy."

"There it was: "We did not do this." There is a deep feeling among some senior Bush administration officials that somehow we had not started the Iraq War. We had been attacked. Bin Laden, al Qaeda, the other terrorist and anti-American forces- whether groups or countries or philosophies- could be lumped together. It was one war, the long war, the two-generation war that Wolfowitz's Bletchley Group II had described after 9/11. "You sure it's the right war at the right time?" I asked Chairman Pace. "Yes, absolutely," Pace said. "Fundamentally, yes. I said that before we started. And I'll say that today. It may not surprise you to understand that taking my country's battles to my country's enemies on their playing field is where I think we should be. To protect my country, to do my oath to my country, and to protect my kids and my grandkids and your kids and your grandkids, I have zero doubt that we have done the right thing.""

"I asked about victory and how it might be achieved, and he said that would require more than security in Iraq. There would have to be self-government and the physical reconstruction of the country- all the "lines of operation" in Casey's war plan. "Is this going to happen in your lifetime?" I asked. "Yes, it is. Well, I hope, yeah. I don't know," he said. "I should retract that line. It can happen in my lifetime." "Do you have any doubts this was the right decision to invade Iraq?" "I have no doubts at all," he said. "None. Zero." "Isn't the process, though, you always have to doubt?" I said. "I live on doubt." "I'm sorry for you," the Marine general said. "Don't be sorry for me," I said. "It's a wonderful process." "I do not have doubt about what we've done," he said. "We did not do this. When we were sitting home minding our own business, we got attacked on 9/11.""

"The men who followed Nixon are like addicts who have been denied their supply of drugs, in this case the alluring narcotic of presidential power. The myth of the big-time president persists, the longing for someone who can define an era worth living in. That is not only what these presidents hope to see in themselves, it is what the public wants and what the press holds up as the standard against which they will be judged. But the post-Watergate conditions have made the emergence of such a leader increasingly unlikely, and the presidents, in frustration, have been in rebellion."

"After Watergate, I never expected another impeachment investigation of a president in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment and a Senate trial. Nixon's successors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First, if there is questionable activity, release the facts, whatever they are, as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries, whether conducted by prosecutors, congressmen or reporters, to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare. But the overwhelming evidence is that five presidents after Nixon didn't understand these lessons. It wasn't that they lacked the political skill. Four of these presidents had mastered American electoral politics to win political power, and Ford almost did. Of the five, Reagan managed his problems best, although belatedly, when, after three months of Iran-contra, he permitted a broad internal White House investigation of his own actions. Why did they not see that they would be held fully accountable for their exercise of power? Historians and psychiatrists will have their own answers to that question, but I have one preliminary conclusion. They have become victims of the myth of the big-time president. As successors to George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt, they expect to rule. But after Vietnam and Watergate, the modern presidency has been limited and diminished. Its inner workings and the behavior of the presidents are fully exposed."

"No journalist or historian can capture 100 percent of what happened. Neither journalism nor history provide an engineer's drawing of events. And participants often disagree. Memory, perspective, and self-interest play their parts. There are statements and events in this book that some of those involved or the sources themselves possibly will not remember- or may not want to remember. Besides, this book is about politics, and politics is about contested ground. I have, however, attempted to give every key participant in these events an opportunity to offer his or her recollections and views."

"At the heart of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign was his pledge to fix the economy and to use the presidency to do it. The fundamental difference between George Bush and himself, Clinton said, was his belief in an activist role for the government. "I know how President Lincoln felt when General McClellan wouldn't attack in the Civil War," Clinton said when he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination on July 16, 1992. "He asked him, 'If you're not going to use your army, may I borrow it?' And so I say: George Bush, if you won't use your power to help people, step aside, I will." This book is about President Clinton's effort to make good on his promise, "I will.""

"It's all over," he said to Cooke. "You've got to come clean. The notes show us the story is wrong. We know it. We can show you point by point how you concocted it."

"I don't believe you on the 'Jimmy' story. No, I don't, and I'm going to prove it if it's the last thing I do."

"If so, our posture would be as follows: we published the story and said it was true, but now we are going to nominate it for a Pulitzer — now that's serious business."

"I believed it, we published it. Official questions had been raised, but we stood by the story and her. Internal questions had been raised, but none about her other work. The reports were about the story not sounding right, being based on anonymous sources, and primarily about purported lies [about] her personal life -- [told by men reporters], two she had dated and one who felt in close competition with her.""

"It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes."

"I think that the decision to nominate the story for a Pulitzer is of minimal consequence. I also think that it won is of little consequence. It is a brilliant story — fake and fraud that it is."

"All good work is done in defiance of management."

"To say that the press brought down Nixon, that's horseshit. The press always plays a role, whether by being passive or by being aggressive, but it's a mistake to overemphasize."

"A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that's it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it's just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work."

"… this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth."

"We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up the life of the race. Our very organism holds memories and glimpses of that long life of our ancestors which still goes on among so many of our contemporaries. Nothing so deadens the sympathies and shrivels the power of enjoyment as the persistent keeping away from the great opportunities for helpfulness and a continual ignoring of the starvation struggle which makes up the life of at least half the race. To shut one’s self away from that half of the race life is to shut one’s self away from the most vital part of it; it is to live out but half the humanity to which we have been born heir."

"one whom I regarded as the greatest woman in the United States (about Jane Addams)"

"As a background was Jane Addams, unassertive, contemplative and sensitive. All the way over we discussed our program. All the way over, that great woman, Miss Addams, listened with as much patience to the suggestions of the worst crank among us as she did to such trained minds as Miss Breckinridge. I have never known anyone who had a greater intellectual hospitality or courtesy. When I spoke of this to her one day, she said quietly, “I have never met anyone from whom I could not learn.”"

"Are you a pacifist?" a stern citizen on a Missouri railway platform asked me one morning as I was leaving a town where I had spoken the night before, and where I had deplored the will to hate I was sensing. "Well," I parried, "I am for winning this war." "Did you sign this?" He pulled out a prewar list of names, a peace society list where my name appeared. It was headed by Jane Addams "that woman," he called her. "I am proud to be classed with that woman," " I said indignantly. "She is one of the world's greatest, and if the world could or would have heeded her counsels you boys would not be dying in France."

"Jane Addams had said to me at the beginning of the War: "Everything that we have gained in the way of social legislation will be destroyed. It will throw us back where we were twenty-five years ago.""

"She always took every chance when it was a matter of human relief"

"It was in 1912 that I was appointed by the National American Woman Suffrage Association to the chairmanship of their Congressional Committee in Washington, which was to work for the passage of the amendment that Susan B. Anthony had helped draw up. And Lucy Burns was asked to go with me. Miss Jane Addams, who was on the national board, made the motion for our appointments. They didn’t take the work at all seriously, or else they wouldn’t have entrusted it to us, two young girls. They did make one condition, and that was that we should never send them any bills, for as much as one dollar. Everything we did, we must raise the money ourselves."

"Chicago's Greektown was adjacent to Hull House, Jane Addams' famed settlement project, whose activities played an important and beneficial role for many early Greek immigrants. The special attention Jane Addams gave to Greek immigrants and her espousal of Greek culture did much to buttress the ethnic pride of the sorely tried Greek immigrants of Chicago."

"It was Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago, who most consistently carried Tolstoyan ideas into practice. Addams had visited Tolstoy in Russia and was a lifelong admirer of his work. She well understood the practical implications of his ideas, which she expressed as follows: "Tolstoy would make non-resistance aggressive. He would carry over into the reservoirs of moral influence all the strength which is now spent in coercion and resistance." In his spirit, she advocated "a newer humanitarianism," aggressive in its pursuit of social welfare and international in its reach, as a moral equivalent for war. Addams steadfastly carried these convictions into practice in her peace activities during World War I and her leadership in the postwar Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She suffered ostracism, vilification and isolation for her pacifism, but she was one of a handful of people who kept the idea and tradition alive in a time of conformity and reaction."

"Jane Addams attended our conference in 1908 and commended our work."

"Jane Addams and others spoke and acted on behalf of women labor leaders like Lucy Parsons, assisting them in rallies, providing bail when they were arrested, and using their tremendous power and influence on behalf of working women...Although many social workers like Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, and socialists like Emma Goldman advocated the rights of immigrants and working women, in most instances during the 1890 to 1910 period their advocacy had little or no effect on the suffragist movement's attitude toward minority or working-class women"

"Somebody said Miss Addams is living proof that a woman can do very much without voting. One can answer: She would do much more when the votes of her sisters were with her."

"Miss Addams is always in action, and many other women, the pride of your country."

"The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist."

"At one time five of us tried to understand De Quincey's marvelous "Dreams" more sympathetically, by drugging ourselves with opium. We solemnly consumed small white powders at intervals during an entire long holiday, but no mental reorientation took place, and the suspense and excitement did not even permit us to grow sleepy. About four o'clock on the weird afternoon, the young teacher whom we had been obliged to take into our confidence, grew alarmed over the whole performance, took away our De Quincey and all the remaining powders, administered an emetic to each of the five aspirants for sympathetic under- standing of all human experience, and sent us to our separate rooms with a stern command to appear at family worship after supper "whether we were able to or not.""

"The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it."

"If the underdog were always right, one might quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding him."

"I have come to believe … that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself."

"Social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty ..."

"Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited."

"Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans."

"Of all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment ..."

"The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy."

"A Settlement is above all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those who have a passion for the equalization of human joys and opportunities are early attracted."

"If the Settlement seeks its expression through social activity, it must learn the difference between mere social unrest and spiritual impulse."

"With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!"

"Life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man’s difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole ..."

"These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."

"My temperament and habit had always kept me rather in the middle of the road; in politics as well as in social reform I had been for "the best possible." But now I was pushed far toward the left on the subject of the war and I became gradually convinced that in order to make the position of the pacifist clear it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position."