David Gergen Quotes

Politics is like watching football. Yes, you can see it directly on your screen, but I think a lot of people want to have some understanding of what's happening, why the play is unfolding the way it is, and I think that's where it can help them, not to render judgments but to help people make their own judgments in a more informed way.

I don't have any problem with a reporter or a news person who says the President is uninformed on this issue or that issue. I don't think any of us would challenge that. I do have a problem with the singular focus on this, as if that's the only standard by which we ought to judge a president. What we learned in the last administration was how little having an encyclopedic grasp of all the facts has to do with governing.

It's easy to confuse motion with progress.

If you've got some news that you don't want to get noticed, put it out Friday afternoon 4:00 pm.

There is a cannibalism that's loose in our society in which public figures such as the Clintons could try to come into this town and do something good for this country and then they get hammered away even though they're trying to do the right thing.

Morality in government begins with officials using words as honestly as possible to describe the truth.

There's a normal tendency in the campaign, during a crisis, for the country to rally around the White House. That may help Al Gore in this campaign, but on the other hand, George W. Bush handled himself so well the other night on foreign policy that I think it fortified him just before this crisis broke.

When he hung up on Nancy Reagan, that's when he crossed his final threshold.

We know that second terms have historically been marred by hubris and by scandal.

One cannot underestimate how widely admired Tom Daschle is in Washington for his integrity.

A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.