“The beauty of our court system is that anybody can enter the court and sue. Uh, you have to be appointed to be in the Executive Branch. You have to be elected to be in the Legislative Branch, but anybody can go into court.”
“Washington is a mean town where human sacrifice has been raised to an art form.”
“There is a no-man’s land in our politics: on the one hand, bounded by what we know to be true, and on the other hand, bounded by what the media says is politically correct. And that’s where Donald Trump lives. And it’s our failure to admit what we all know to be true in the guise of political correctness that fuels the Trump candidacy.”
“No candidate can win a presidential race advocating gay marriage and opposing the military action in Iraq.”
“’Yes’ is a far more potent word than ‘no’ in American politics. By adopting the positions which animate the political agenda for the other side, one can disarm them and leave them sputtering with nothing to say.”
“Anybody who thinks that getting a communication from a voter in your district is spam – that guy is pork. Roast pork unless he changes his point of view.”
“Spontaneous combustion of grassroots politics is the future.”
“I didn’t do what they said I did. I may have done enough so that I don’t know if I can prove my innocence.”
“Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines.”
“The Iraq War marked the beginning of the end of network news coverage. Viewers saw the juxtaposition of the embedded correspondents reporting the war as it was actually unfolding and the jaundiced, biased, negative coverage of these same events in the network newsrooms.”
“The Democratic Party opposes tax cuts but it cannot say so publicly. Thus, it is forced to support the idea of lowering the tax burden but using class warfare rhetoric to dispute the allocation of the relief.”
“Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.”
“Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.”
“Bill and Hillary Clinton have one central idea in their uncluttered, ambitious minds: Hillary in 2008. Let Bush get re-elected, use the ’04 primaries and general election to clean out the underbrush of competing Democratic candidates, and proceed unimpeded to the ’08 nomination.”
“We need to stop spending money on death, the war in Iraq and on enhancing the lives of the people in our own country.”
“The stronger Hillary is, the weaker she is. The more she seems like a likely presidential winner, the more difficult the senate race becomes in New York. It’s perfect.”
“I love Karl Rove. He elected Bush.”
“The old rules and the old methods of winning are gone.”
“I like Bill Clinton.”
“Public-opinion polls show that Americans split about evenly on civil unions. But when the words ‘gay marriage’ are presented, they break 3-to-1 against it.”
“As Bob Dole found out, you can’t keep a positive image while being your party’s mouthpiece in Congress. That’s why no legislative leader since James Madison has ever been elected president.”
“I think that the reason Clinton chose Gore was that he was an example of what Clinton was like. He was kind of almost like the yellow magic marker that you use to highlight the text so that you can really remember what are the most salient features of it.”
“Lincoln and Clinton had a lot in common in the way they were elected: In both cases, they were dark horses. In both cases, they were from small states. In both cases, they were not the favorite for their parties’ nomination.”
“Franklin Roosevelt didn’t poll, because he had great political instincts. Now we have polls; we don’t need instincts. But is that a change in principle? Is it a change in principle that we use a Xerox instead of carbon paper? It’s of the same order of magnitude.”
“I felt that what you should do is really take the best from each party’s agenda and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the Left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the Right, take the idea that they have to work for a living and that there are time limits.”
“I will not subject my wife, family or friends to the sadistic vitriol of yellow journalism. I will not dignify such journalism with a reply or an answer. I never will.”
“Sometimes nationalism can be jingoistic – even fascistic – but it can also be a constructive impetus that helps to unify a nation. Those whose nationalist critique of parties finds resonance with masses of voters can acquire vast power. We can only hope that they know what to do with it.”
“Anybody else who’s gotten the president of the United States elected, tell me you are better than I am at it.”
“Bill Clinton’s incredibly bold idea was to change the grant to a transaction: we’ll give you something, but we demand something back; the way he would phrase it is, ‘We’ll give you opportunity, but you have to take responsibility.’”
“The macro of any negotiation is that the only time you can cut a deal is when both sides are hurting. If either side is – is well and feeling happy, you can’t get a deal. Then they go for victory. You need – if they’re willing to settle for things the other side can live with, it’s because they’re hurting a little bit.”
“When the history of the 20th century is written, there are going to be some pretty obscure people who are entitled to sainthood. And they’re not going to be well-known.”
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