Presidential Campaign Quotes

I work really long hours and work a lot and have done press tours and junkets, but there is nothing like a presidential campaign that I have experienced before ... I think at one point we visited three different cities in one state in 12 hours. It's exhausting. ~ America Ferrera

I think that the media is as divided on this issue [of gay marriage] as the Obama family - which is to say not at all. And so he's never going to get negative coverage for this ... When you have almost the entire media establishment on your side on an issue in a presidential campaign, it's very hard to lose politically. ~ Mark Halperin

When I hit the skins they all say, 'Damn Kane ...
You knock out the Bush like a presidential campaign!' ~ Big Daddy Kane

Sen. Joe Biden, on the day of announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, called Barack Obama the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, and ... clean. I think we've seen the shortest presidential campaign in history. ~ Jay Leno

The night before I began my career as a presidential campaign reporter, in September 2007, I finished Theodore White's 'The Making of the President,' the classic account of the 1960 race, which opened up a new era of campaign reporting. ~ Michael Hastings

On the issue of Iraq, it is my hope, and my challenge to my colleagues, that our debate will be based on what is best for the future of our nation and for Iraq, not what's best for a political party or presidential campaign. ~ Mitch McConnell

The foundation and cornerstone of state leadership is power of the people. ~ Wayne Chirisa

Bush had expertise in one thing: How to run a Presidential campaign. He understands campaigns and Presidential politics. He has no interest or disposition or I think probably - he's not stupid, but he's not bright, he's not a rocket scientist - he isn't interested in policy. ~ John Dean

In the last month of the presidential campaign, I tuned in to conservative talk radio and listened as callers considered the unthinkable. One after another, they all threatened the same thing: "If McCain doesn't win, I'm leaving the country." "Oh, right," I'd say. "You're going to leave and go where? Right-wing Europe?" In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church. The doctor might be a woman who became a man and then became a woman again, all on taxpayers' dollars, but as long as she saves the stem cells, she'll have the nation's blessing. ~ David Sedaris

This week Biden said that he will decide on a potential 2016 presidential campaign by the spring or the summer. Then he said, 'Whichever comes first.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

For two centuries supporters of the Electoral College have built their arguments on a series of faulty premises. The Electoral College is a gross violation of the cherished value of political equality. At the same time, it does not protect the interests of small states or racial minorities, nor does it serve as a bastion of federalism. Instead the Electoral College distorts the presidential campaign so that candidates ignore most small states - and many large ones - and pay little attention to minorities. ~ George C. Edwards III

The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races. ~ Robert McChesney

When Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential campaign, Eszterhas wrote "Joe Lieberman frightens me. Why should we, an Hollywood voter, donate money to a man who threatens our creative freedom, our freedom of expression." ~ David Shuster

or the need for a Trump 2012 presidential campaign ("This is what I've been waiting for my whole life, a president who's not afraid to tell the truth about being a lying asshole!"), ~ Chris Smith

The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails. ~ David Ignatius

Obama's judges share his contempt for the original meaning of the Constitution. He has long seen the U.S. Constitution as an obstacle to what he considers progress. In a 2001 interview that surfaced during the 2008 presidential campaign, he made this very clear: the Supreme Court under Justice Earl Warren had failed to break "free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution," Obama told the host of a radio show. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

We do have a grand strategy," says Zeese, who was the spokesman for Ralph Nader's 2004 presidential campaign. "Nonviolent movements shift power by attacking the columns that hold the power structure in place. Those columns are the military, police, media, business, workers, youth, faith groups, NGOs, and civil servants. Every time we deal with the police, we have that in mind. The goal is not to hit them, hit them, hit them, and weaken them. The goal is to pull people from those columns to our side. We want the police to know that we understand they're not the 1 percent. The goal is not to get every police officer, but to get enough police so that you have a division. ~ Chris Hedges

Marco Rubio's presidential campaign has raised $40 million in the last week. When he heard that, Rubio said, 'Hey, any chance I can drop out of the race and just keep the 40 million?' ~ Jimmy Fallon

The timed email bombs of the 2016 presidential campaign were also a powerful form of disinformation. Words written in one situation make sense only in that context. The very act of removing them from their historical moment and dropping them in another is an act of falsification. What is worse, when media followed the email bombs as if they were news, they betrayed their own mission. ~ Timothy Snyder

In a state that continued to be saddled with a sternly limited governmental structure devised when the South was just emerging from the bruising experience of the Civil War and Reconstruction, she also had to contend with fact that national politics and changing demographics had left her swimming for her life as a liberal Democrat in an ocean of conservative Republicans. In a failed presidential campaign, Texas's Republican senator Phil Gramm once boasted that the best thing a politician can have is money. It helps, of course, and yet he was proved quite wrong: the biggest advantage a politician can have is that people like you. ~ Jan Reid

Technology policy - whether we should have one and what form such a policy should take - was a core issue of the 1992 presidential campaign, and in February 1993 the Clinton administration confirmed that fostering new technologies will be a critical part of its agenda for redirecting the American economy. ~ Lewis M. Branscomb

I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up. ~ John Ortberg

The point of a presidential campaign is to put the candidate through the ringer: to force him to get banged up by his opponents and the press, and to have to answer the difficult and uncomfortable questions, be investigated, and learn the thrust and parry of political swordplay. ~ Monica Crowley

You're a trivial part in a trivia game.
Now what's your aim? A presidential campaign?
Like Ross Perot? He lost it though ...
But he got a billion in tha bank fo' sho'! ~ Aceyalone

Do you know who is ready to go with the presidential campaign? Jeb Bush. Jeb already has plans to end the war in Iraq that his brother started. All he needs is a hot tub time machine. ~ David Letterman

The brutality of the pace. This was my third presidential campaign and it was a thousand times faster paced than my first one in 2004. The news cycle is constant and there has been an explosion in the number of news outlets covering them. As as result we're witnessing news and entertainment melding together to create what I'd describe as the "American Idolization" of campaigns and politics. ~ Kevin Madden

Third parties in America gravitate not only to the extremes, but to irrelevance. (John Anderson's upcoming presidential campaign will undoubtedly confirm both tendencies.) ~ Charles Krauthammer

I've often reflected on this in the past weeks as I've been following the presidential campaign: Very often, I thought it would have been great for both of these guys to sit down and be force-fed a couple of dozen episodes of Star Trek. ~ Patrick Stewart

When I joined Bill Clinton's start-up presidential campaign in 1991, I was confident that women would play an ever more important role, but I never gave a minute's thought to what would happen if we won. When we did - and I became the first woman to serve as White House press secretary - it changed my life. But it didn't change the world. ~ Dee Dee Myers

Presidential campaign getting kind of ugly, did you hear about this? Yesterday, a 27-year-old woman came for to deny rumors that she had an affair with Democratic front-runner John Kerry. The woman added, 'I would never cheat on Bill Clinton.' ~ Conan O'Brien

Who knows if John McCain could have won that presidential campaign [2008] in any circumstances when George W. Bush the outgoing Republican president had a 22 percent approval rating. ~ Rachel Maddow

Grassroots organizing tends to be most available to big campaigns, but it's actually most useful to small ones. You can't win a presidential campaign without going on TV, but you can win a local election simply by organizing your community. NationBuilder levels the playing field. ~ Joe Green

Witness Donald Trump's current presidential campaign. So first people need to find the white spaces, the unexploited or underexploited niches where there is less competition and more opportunity. ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid marveled at the electability of Barack Obama because, unlike previous black candidates, Mr. Obama was 'light-skinned' and lacked a 'Negro dialect.' ~ Monica Crowley

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy. ~ James Q. Wilson

Any time you get into a presidential campaign and the stakes are so high, all candidates - they want to be in complete control whenever they can. And you can't blame them for that. ~ Bob Schieffer

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale. ~ John W. Gardner

So who is the real Jerry Falwell? Is he a rabid, hate-spewing fundamentalist? Or is he a dutiful family man, a talented preacher, and a competent administrator? Was John McCain right when he called Dr. Falwell an "agent of intolerance" during the 2000 presidential campaign? Or was the Wall Street Journal right when, in 1978, it described him as a "man of charm, drive, talent, and ambition"? Well, in a way, both are right. In fact, that's the overwhelming impression I get from the time I've spent watching Dr. Falwell this semester and talking to him this afternoon: he's a complex character, but he's not hiding anything. He may be a blundering, arch-conservative provocateur, and he may spew anti-gay venom more often than most people brush their teeth, but I honestly think he believes every word he preaches, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he really does stay awake at night worrying about the homosexual agenda, the evils of abortion, and the imminent spread of liberalism. He really does think America needs to be saved. ~ Kevin Roose

I heard this today and I thought this was fascinating and interesting. President Bush has two daughters, two beautiful daughters, and they may work on their father's presidential campaign after they get out of college and I thought, well, that's a pretty good move because in this economy, they won't be able to find real jobs. ~ David Letterman

The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt. ~ David Pietrusza

I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing. ~ James L. Buckley

I am sent on assignments just like guys. I have covered presidential campaigns, natural disasters, tragedies, red carpets, medical stories and more. ~ Megan Alexander

As someone who's been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new. ~ Dan Rather

She had been skeptical about change since Obama's first presidential campaign, when it seemed everyone was eager to change. She knew then, and has know all along, that most people hate to change though they're happy to see others do it. ~ Dennis Vickers

I believe over the long term he's going to have the money, and he's got the message, that this is going to be one of the finalists for the presidential campaign. ~ Ted Cruz

When I first started working in politics, as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign, it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access. ~ Dee Dee Myers

In a presidential campaign, you can't lie. You can't hide what you are and what you want. You can't hide what kind of President you'll be. You can't keep on talking about nothing indefinitely and committing to nothing, you can't keep running away from debate, masking the challenges. ~ Nicolas Sarkozy

Let's not overlook, though, what we do know about the campaign finance scandal, and the fact the Chinese were involved in our presidential campaign and our congressional campaigns. ~ Fred Thompson

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign announced that it raised over $1.5 million in the 24 hours after he announced his bid. Meanwhile, a 12-year-old on Kickstarter just raised $7 million in five minutes after announcing his idea for juice box water guns. ~ Jimmy Fallon

What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don't go right. Which is to say, often. ~ Carl Bernstein

The arguments in the Brexit vote and in the American presidential campaign are about the same. In a friendly way, may I also give some advice to the American people to make the right choice when the moment comes. ~ Francois Hollande

From 1976, Judy to 1996, we had six presidential elections. And it was run under the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1974. In all six of them, every candidate agreed to limits of what he could collect in contributions and what he could spend in seeking a nomination. And they all abided by it. ~ Mark Shields

NO POLITICIAN COULD devote as many evenings to poker and whiskey as had Henry Clay and expect a decorous presidential campaign. ~ Amy S. Greenberg

Sometimes in the middle of a presidential campaign, there's a political movie, and people are sick of hearing about politics, and they don't want to see that movie. They'd rather see "Godzilla." ~ Casey Affleck

Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ~ Mark McKinnon

I am suspending my presidential campaign, because of the continued distractions, the continued hurt caused on me and my family, not because we are not fighters. Not because I'm not a fighter. ~ Herman Cain

A presidential campaign may easily degenerate into a mere personal contest, and so lose its real dignity. There is no indispensable man. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Attack politics costs us dearly in terms of insight into the candidates. In a presidential campaign, the focus is so tight that the politicians are afraid to say anything that hasn't been scripted. ~ Jack Germond

Presidential campaign observer Teddy White on the second Kennedy-Nixon debate in which the candidates spoke from separate television studios: It was as if, separated by comments from his adversary, Richard Nixon was more at ease and could speak directly to the nation that lay between them. ~ David Pietrusza

In presidential campaign I released a 65-page file from the Syracuse University College of Law that showed poor grades, back in college, also. If I were plagiarizing consistently, my grades would have been better. ~ Joe Biden

The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence, we have created the perpetual presidential campaign. ~ Hugh Sidey

The 2016 presidential campaign is heating up. Can you feel the indifference, the apathy? ~ David Letterman

You may never have heard of Joseph Overton and his proverbial window but you most certainly have heard the Republican presidential campaign in 2015 year not just flinging the window open but shattering all its glass. ~ Rachel Maddow

Time magazine interviewed Bill Clinton about the current presidential campaign, and he claimed he had to ask Hillary to marry him three times before she said yes. Then Hillary was like, 'Yeah. That wasn't me.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

To great effect, Reagan echoed white frustration in race-neutral terms through implicit racial appeals. His 'color-blind' rhetoric on crime, welfare, taxes, and states' rights was clearly understood by white (and black) voters as having a racial dimension, though claims to that effect were impossible to prove. The absence of explicitly racist rhetoric afforded the racial nature of his coded appeals a certain plausible deniability. For example, when Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign at the annual Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi - the town where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964 - he assured the crowd 'I believe in states' rights,' and promised to restore to states and local governments the power that properly belonged to them. His critics promptly alleged that he was signaling a racial message to his audience, suggesting allegiance with those who resisted desegregation, but Reagan firmly denied it, forcing liberals into a position that would soon become familiar - arguing that something is racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist language. ~ Michelle Alexander

I think because I really didn't have a good strategy for my campaign. I didn't plan it the right way ... As a candidate who was already so well known ... I don't think I ever said, 'Yes, you may have known me for eight years, but I don't take anything for granted. I have to earn your support. ~ Hillary Clinton

Military operations cannot be tidy or free of friction - particularly in a coalition whose contributing nations see the campaign through national prisms. ~ Mike Jackson

Even during my father's 1984 gubernatorial campaign, it was, 'Do you want to grow up and be governor one day?' 'No. I am four.' ~ Chelsea Clinton

Many people ... prefer to describe themselves as progressives rather than liberals. To some extent that's a response to the decades-long propaganda campaign conducted by movement conservatives, which has been quite successful in making Americans disdain the word liberal but much less successful in reducing support for liberal policies. ~ Paul Krugman

The efforts of the medical profession in the US to control: ... its ... job it proposes to monopolize. It has been carrying on a vigorous campaign all over the country against new methods and schools of healing because it wants the business ... I have watched this medical profession for a long time and it bears watching. ~ Clarence Darrow

The Lawrence campaign keeps dropping by. They want us to endorse the president." "You should," I muttered. "Kate!" She made a sound like she was punching me through the phone. "Shut up, you know we're not doing that. Mom and Papi love your dad, especially now. It's not like he did anything to hurt us." "He didn't do anything to help either." "Yeah, he did," she said. "That day at our house. He listened. ~ Jenn Marie Thorne

Baseball is our national pastime, that is if you discount political campaigning. ~ Ronald Reagan

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth. ~ William J. Clinton

While the (America's) Cup is yachting's Holy Grail, it has also come to represent the ultimate test in 'the game of life.' Just as in life, success demands commitment and commitment demands a positive winning attitude. I told all the guys who came into our Cup campaign that if they were going to make the grade they needed three essential ingredients: attitude, attitude and attitude. I wanted commitment to the commitment. When they finally made the crew, some of them joked that they ought to be committed for their commitment to the commitment. ~ Dennis Conner

I was through as a manager. I did become involved late in the 1968 campaign at the national scene at the last minute. But I was through as a manager, and I've stayed through, incidentally. ~ Lew Wasserman

Now, Mr. President, we don't intend to trouble you during the campaign but after you are elected, then look out for us! ~ Susan B. Anthony

A decent and manly examination of the acts of government should not only be tolerated, but encouraged. ~ William Henry Harrison

I dont see we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there: if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They wont all lie to you but a lot of them will. And itll be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes. So every day till the end of this campaign, Ill answer any question anyone has on government, but if you have a question on religion, please, go to church. ~ Alan Alda

After starting a blood feud with Fox News, something no Republican presidential candidate has dared to do before, [Donald] Trump seems to have successfully undermine the network in the eyes of its core audience with perception of the Fox News brand among Republican adults hitting its lowest point in three years according to a new YouGov survey. ~ Chris Hayes

From the 12th Congressional District Hopeful William Jefferson Clinton during the Nixon investigations.
I wanted to share some information I've turned up regarding two of your Clinton quotes. ~ Keith Richards

They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honor, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be. ~ Plutarch

And I get angry. Because we've tried so hard. Ninety-six percent of Black women tried so hard in voting against him. And not only did this country not elect Clinton, it elected a person who publicly supported sexual assault, a man one accused of rape by his daughter Ivanka's mother. I am angry with the Democratic Party for not knowing that there could have been and should have been a better candidate and angry that a better campaign -- a campaign that honored the journey, that included community in real and transformative ways -- was not launched. I am angry I didn't realize -- or accept on a cellular level -- how wedded to racism and misogyny average Americans are. I am angry at my own naiveté. Our own naiveté. There was a real and substantive difference between these two candidates and we didn't take that seriously enough. ~ Patrisse Khan-Cullors

McChrystal had organized a jaw-dropping counterterrorism campaign inside Iraq, but the tactical successes did not translate into a strategic victory. This was why counterinsurgency - blanketing the population in safety and winning them over - was necessary. ~ Bob Woodward

Nothing brings closure to a campaign like opening it up again. ~ Jon Stewart

In the election campaign of 1930, Hitler seldom spoke explicitly of Jews. The crude tirades of the early 1920s were missing altogether. 'Living-space' figured more prominently, posed against the alternative international competition for markets ... The key theme now was the collapse of Germany under parliamentary democracy and party government into a divided people with separate and conflicting interests, which only the NSDAP could overcome by creating a new unity of the nation, transcending class, estate and profession. ~ Ian Kershaw

Presidential leadership needn't always cost money. Look for low- and no-cost options. They can be surprisingly effective. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty. ~ Nathaniel Branden

One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas. ~ Matt Taibbi

President Bush was in Los Angeles yesterday where he announced his new campaign theme - "Safer, Stronger, and Tested." Isn't that a condom ad? ~ Jay Leno

People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don't vote. They often don't elect politicians, so the politicians who are supporting them are really being very charitable, because they're not going to give them billions of dollars in campaign funds. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I would argue that one of the issues which the public should be much more emphatic about with all politicians ... is patronage, appointing people to high positions because they supported your campaign or helped you raise money. ~ John Hickenlooper

The Kony campaign us an example of how powerful 'slacktivisim' can be, and demonstrates that, with enough worldwide awareness and social pressure, movements like this one have the power to make politicians move. It also makes the ignorant less so. No-one knew who Kony was before the campaign. The atrocities were happening, and it wasn't even a blip on the social consciousness radar. It's encouraging that there's a way to spread information like this so quickly. ~ Charlie Caruso

The Republican Party is slightly ahead of Democrats when it come to devaluing any traditional understanding of foreign and national security policy. This is not surprising, because in all other matter of public policy, the GOP has strictly subordinated practical governance and problem solving to the emotional thematics of an endless political campaign. Whether the topic is Iran, Russia, or the proper level of defense spending at a time of high deficits, the GOP's stance has little to do with the merits of the situation; it is a projection of domestic political sloganeering. Taking a position on anything, whcther it be Ukraine or the efficacy of drones, boils down to a talking-point projection of focus groups-tested emotional themes: strength versus weakness, standing tall versus cutting and running, acting versus thinking." pp. 157-158 ~ Mike Lofgren

Once every 12 years there is a unique opportunity to reinforce the bonds between Mexico and the United States, when our presidential election cycles coincide. ~ Enrique Pena Nieto

I've spent quality time in the aerospace community, with my service on two presidential commissions, but at heart, I'm an academic. Being an academic means I don't wield power over person, place or thing. I don't command armies; I don't lead labor unions. All I have is the power of thought. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure, the completion of a five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign. But the city made us new, and we made it ours. We didn't get lost amid the sprawl of tall buildings, the stream of anonymous masses, the ceaseless din of traffic. We found one another, started up Indian Centers, brought out our families and powwows, our dances, our songs, our beadwork. We bought and rented homes, slept on the streets, under freeways; we went to school, joined the armed forces, populated Indian bars in the Fruitvale in Oakland and in the Mission in San Francisco. We lived in boxcar villages in Richmond. We made art and we made babies and we made way for our people to go back and forth between reservation and city. We did not move to cities to die. The sidewalks and streets, the concrete, absorbed our heaviness. The glass, metal, rubber, and wires, the speed, the hurtling masses - the city took us in. ~ Tommy Orange

campaign in poetry and govern in prose" - and ~ David Axelrod

If I don't have a woman for three days, I get terrible headaches. ~ John F. Kennedy

No candidate dares to look for a new campaign model that could really enhance the democratic process. Instead we are left with the current one which makes our candidates look like hucksters. ~ Greta Van Susteren

Political impotence is finished. Today is the beginning of the orgasm. All the people, I promise you, will feel the orgasm of next year's presidential election. ~ Vladimir Zhirinovsky