If nobody trusts you as president, then you can't get anything done.

When President Obama first unveiled his gun control proposals recommending a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and better background checks, there seemed to be momentum behind the effort. But then the proposals ran into a wall.

Like Lyndon Johnson, President Obama understands that timidity in a time of troubles is a prescription for failure.

There was a president who was much less healthy than the public image of him conveyed. If [the public] knew about it in 1960, I doubt that he would have been elected.

Allegations that President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich partly in return for donations to his presidential library have raised questions about the value of such institutions and the federal appropriations that support them.

Lyndon Johnson is not a comfortable model for President Obama to imitate. He is an all-but-forgotten president - pilloried for the failed war in Vietnam and criticized for grandiose reforms conservatives denounce as the epitome of federal social engineering that costs too much and does too little.