H. W. Brands Quotes

H. W. Brands

Profession : Historian

Birth : August 7, 1953

I'm more inclined to say the presidency has changed Trump rather than Trump changed the presidency. He has moderated or reversed himself on most of the positions he took as a candidate. Reality has set in, as it does with every new president.

H. W. Brands

By the early 1960s, there was a moral consensus on what needed to be done on civil rights.

H. W. Brands

Once you become president, you don't even have to stop for red lights. And if it looks like traffic's too bad, you just take a helicopter.

H. W. Brands

The president is the one person who potentially could be the unifying figure in the country. And if the president or a presidential candidate basically writes off 40 states, then how in the world do the people in those 40 states feel like they have a stake in that person or that election?

H. W. Brands

In the academic world, biographies of these great figures of the past fell out of favor in the 1960s, when there was a turn toward social history, which meant the history of the voiceless and faceless. But the public at large never embraced the idea that these dead white guys should be abandoned.

H. W. Brands

When you're actually president, the spin matters a lot less.

H. W. Brands

I'm often asked, 'Why didn't Benjamin Franklin ever become president?' My short, easy answer is: He died.

H. W. Brands

In the early days of the republic, the secretary of state was the heir apparent to the president. Presidents could easily hand-pick their party's next candidate. The party caucuses formally selected the candidates, but presidents guided the process.

H. W. Brands

Booker Washington was branded an accommodationist by many of the people who criticized him.

H. W. Brands

Presidents are evaluated not by what they did by the stroke of their own pen; it's what they persuade Congress to do.

H. W. Brands

America can change its presidents, but the world doesn't change.

H. W. Brands

Members of Congress are somewhat reluctant to tangle with a president who seems to have the backing of the American people.

H. W. Brands

Presidents have to decide what their popularity is for. Lyndon Johnson probably understood best that political popularity is a wasting asset. You had to use it when you had it.

H. W. Brands

I had this grand plan for writing the history of the United States in six volumes. This was in the mid-1990s; I was fairly young and very ambitious. I pitched it to a publisher, who just laughed at me.

H. W. Brands

People are interested in people. They buy biographies; they don't buy studies of presidencies.

H. W. Brands

When you look at the development of the American presidency, you see that the presidents who have had the greatest impact are the ones who fit their times most successfully.

H. W. Brands

Politics is not something most people have to do every day. Their daily lives are much more influenced by job opportunities, whether the country is in a recession or a boom period. If you really want to understand what drives American history, look at the economic... side.

H. W. Brands

The race question in America has often been about race, but it has equally often been about power.

H. W. Brands

Everything that happens today is like something in the past, but it's also unlike things in the past. We never know until an event happens if it's the similarities or differences that matter more.

H. W. Brands

With my students, I always have to sell my subject because I know when you're 19, 20 years old, you've got other things on your mind besides American history. What I have to do is make this as compelling as possible.

H. W. Brands