Defense Secretary Robert Gates has served seven U.S. presidents. CBS News’ Katie Couric asked the Wichita native to play “word association” with those presidents.
On Lyndon Baines Johnson: “He was larger than life.”
On Richard Nixon: “Probably one of our strangest presidents. . . . I think he had a distorted personality.”
On Gerald Ford: “Very underrated president.”
On Jimmy Carter: “He could not establish priorities.”
On Ronald Reagan: “A great president, I think a historic president. . . . Far smarter, far slyer and more manipulative and more sophisticated in his view of the world than people gave him credit for at the time.”
On George W. Bush: “Firm in his convictions, easy decision maker. . . . He was a good listener. He would get briefings and he would ask a lot of questions.”
On Barack Obama: “He takes his time to get all the facts and to do the analysis and to make sure that he understands everything about situations. But he doesn’t shrink from the really tough decisions.”
“He’s almost like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On one level, he’s proposed so many changes. But on the other end, when it comes time to settling this budget battle with the House and Senate, he was surprisingly mute.” — Kansas State University political scientist Joe Aistrup, about Gov. Sam Brownback’s first session
“Next year, we’re going to start plowing a little deeper.” — House Speaker Pro Tem Jene Vickrey, R-Louisburg, on the 2012 legislative agenda
“He’s young, ambitious and good-looking. You’ve not heard the last of him.” — Sen. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina, when asked at a forum about the motivations behind Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s push for a voter ID law
As noted by Mayor Carl Brewer at last Tuesday’s Wichita City Council meeting, former City Manager Gene Denton died May 14 in Kansas City, Mo., at age 77. After a nine-year tenure that saw clashes over fiscal policy with then-Mayor Bob Knight, Denton resigned in 1985 to become administrator of Johnson County. At least some of Denton’s priorities as city manager persist today, including the desire to “make something happen” downtown and promote partnership between the city and Sedgwick County. As he left Wichita he lamented that “in other cities, developers and banks take the risk. Here, the city has been taking the risk.” One of Denton’s favorite sayings about the often-thankless job of being a municipal CEO, delivered with a fake Swedish accent, was, “Yust doin’ my yob.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has served seven U.S. presidents. CBS News’ Katie Couric asked the Wichita native to play “word association” with those presidents.
