1. Theodore Roosevelt, 1905: “I did my pan a few weeks ago by signing a bill under which the Trinity River will be improved.”
2. William Howard Taft, told by an aide that their car could not be located after a 1909 banquet: “That’s all right. I can’t think of a better place than Dallas to remain in.”
3. Calvin Coolidge, after being alarmed by swarming children on an observation platform: “Get off, children, get off.”
4. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936: “I have come here to bear the tribute of the nation to you on your one-hundredth birthday. You are a hundred years young.”
5. Harry Truman, to interviewers on a train to Dallas in 1948: “I’m still a Democrat, a fighting Democrat, but I’m not a Dallas News Democrat.”
6. Truman, 1948: “When I say ’Texas’ that’s the definition for hospitality.”
7. Truman, 1948, before speaking at Elmwood Methodist Church: “Maybe I ought to start preaching, like Billy Graham.”
8. John F. Kennedy, November 22,1963, after seeing the infamous ad denouncing him in The Dallas Morning News: “We’re really in nut country now! How can people write such things?”
9. Richard Nixon at SMU, 1971: “I see all of America out here. I hope when the history of this campaign is written it will read: ’As SMU went, so went Texas. And as Texas went, so went America.’”
10. Jimmy Carter, 1984, speaking to SMU students on the school prayer amendment: “I trust many of you pray regularly, or at least at exam time.”
11. Ronald Reagan, addressing a local farmers’ meeting in 1983: “I’m as happy as a hog in a tater patch.”
12. Reagan, 1984, on Dallas housing developments: “You’re out in front of the rest of the U.S. as to the comeback.”
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