I try not to be too optimistic or pessimistic. If you're a pessimist then that's depressing all the time; if you're an optimist and things don't work out then that's depressing, too. ↗
Barack Obama may have found the answer to his biggest rhetorical challenge: When millions of voters are unemployed or underemployed, how does a president simultaneously sound realistic and optimistic? ↗
He and Reagan were not at all alike, because Reagan is an optimist and Dick Nixon wasn't. Yet in some ways they were alike. Neither really liked to talk on the telephone, for instance. And, in a lot of respects, both of them were very much loners. ↗