I think Roosevelt proves himself to be the ultimate political force in this book. He really wasn't for primaries until he realized it was the only wa….

So, in Kennedy's case, he was a Catholic. And people thought after the Al Smith election and so forth that a Catholic couldn't win in the United Stat….

Reagan, people claimed, was too old to run for president and to be elected. But he proved himself such a vigorous campaigner in the primary system th….

The reverse is a system in which you basically let people who were leaders in one way or another - people sometimes decried as party bosses, people w….

When he [Franklin Roosevelt] ultimately does not get the Republican Party nomination and decides to start his new Bull Moose Party, he does, for the ….

But he [Franklin Roosevelt] specifically prohibits any black participation from the Deep South, something which just infuriates people who'd been his….

You know, the primary process itself is very confusing. But in the end, I guess I believe what Winston Churchill said, which is that democracy is the….

And so there are a lot of bad things. And in this campaign, if there's somebody you don't think should be nominated, if you think there's a coarsenes….

And of course, in the case of Barack Obama, had he not won primaries - and particularly the heavily important caucus in Iowa - if the public hadn't s….

To picture Roosevelt as a man at this time in his life - he felt he was old. He was 53 years old, feeling lonely and irrelevant. And all of a sudden,….