Rick Perlstein

Everyone on the Left has a favorite story that allows them to kind of excuse Reagan, explain away Reagan, say he was dumb, but unless we reckon with that kind of emotional intelligence and his ability to kind of speak to the aspirations of the American people, the less liberals are going to be able to understand the soul of his appeal.

Whatever you think about his intelligence, what's unquestionable is that Reagan had extraordinary emotional intelligence. He could sense the temperature of a room, and tell them a story and make them feel good. And that's more fun, right? It's more fun to feel good than feel bad. That's part of our human state.

Liberals tend to stress how marvelous education is, in and of itself, and also adore it as a vessel for genuine equality. (That's me, by the way: Hell, I think we should be spending $50 billion a year to make college education free).

Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it).

Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory.

There's no question that Kennedy was an utter failure as a passer of laws during his proverbial thousand days.

Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it.

The head of Goldwater's California operation "what was so uncomfortable around people that he worked up a routine to deal with employees with whom he was forced to share an elevator: "Taken your vacation yet?" he would ask when they entered; answer took just long enough to deliver him to his fourth-floor office.

One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. _ Elizabeth Drew

He fetishized limits.

The task of defending capitalism was still important to leave to the capitalists.

Fifties advertising was a dogmatic art, to the point of pretending to be a science.

Television was suppressing their freedom not to know.

Chits knew no ideology.

Ronald Reagan was just as angry. But he made you want to stand right alongside him and shake your fist at the same things he was shaking his fist at.

Goldwater's approach to any political problem invariably derived from the evidence of his own eyes.

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

Do what you are doing. Monastic motto