Dennis E. Eckart Quotes

We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.

Political advertising works, particularly when it’s unrebutted.

'Three Billboards,' which is not based on a true story but does have some reality flavoring, must appear worthy of elected office in some way. This was, at first, the illusion presented by the people running the campaigns and, in turn, over the years, has become the custom for lots of us.

Even though voters overwhelmingly dislike negative ads, they do influence voters' opinions about a candidate.

When they [Democrats] running all these ads that are characterizing [Mitt] Romney as a rich, insensitive, out of touch, aloof nerd who loved having his dog on the roof of the station wagon, who didn't care when the wife of an employee dies with cancer.

Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.

Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse, which reached a low during the dispiriting presidential campaign of 1988. Then, more than ever before, negative argument displaced reasoned discussion about how a nation might best be governed. The sound bite reigned. Attack commercials flourished. The signs this year aren't any better. Evidence that negative campaigning can come back to sink the sender has had little impact. The races for governor in California and Texas have already seen the same slash and burn. No doubt the proceedings will grow more rabid still as November nears. Negative discourse serves democracy poorly. The temptation to avoid serious debate is already great. It increases as the stakes soar and slander becomes a rewarding, easy option. The issues of the day go untended. The whole affair takes on the character of the gladiator's art. The GOPAC glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence—the Republican whip in the House—and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document. The nakedness of the GOPAC offering also makes it useful. There must be limits to the negative politics that voters will bear; the bald appeal to invective will certainly probe those limits. For now, it should be said that some adjectives in the glossary aptly describe the glossary itself: shallow, sensationalist, and, yes, shame(ful).

Eisenhower was willing to experiment with television to promote his candidacy, his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson was less inclined to do so. Fearful that the election might become a simple decision between “Ivory soap vs. Palmolive,” Stevenson shunned short, televised commercials and opted instead to talk sense to the American people with more substantive speeches.

Candidates who went into an election with negatives higher than 30 or 40 points just inevitably lost.... Drive up the opposition's negatives.

It [television] has locked candidates into ridiculous positions because only ridiculous positions can be compacted into 30-second commercials.

If a negative ad is run against you and you don't answer it, it becomes the truth.

For an office-seeker [candidate], sticks and stones are greatly to be preferred to an adhesive adjective.

The political innovation that produced the strongest impact was the manipulation of moving pictures. Alarmed by the Sinclair threat, MGM's Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg produced fake newsreels, using Hollywood actors. W.R. Hearst helped distribute them. For the first time, the screen was used to demolish a candidate, a precursor of political attack ads on television.

It is increasingly difficult to run a campaign of substance in an atmosphere which increasingly focuses on personality.

Without television, Richard Nixon would not have a chance. He would not have a prayer of being elected because the press would not let him get through to the people.

Mudslinging – In politics, anything bad the opponent says about our candidate; in contrast, when our candidate does this, it is called 'making a good point.

You certainly don't want to market the president as if he or she were a box of breakfast cereal.

One of the most overused phrases in political commentary is that someone is running a 'negative' campaign filled with 'attack' ads.

The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti-Rev. Wright or, if Sen. Clinton wins, anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail. This model has already been tested with disastrous results.

Hillary Clinton is got to make the case for herself that nobody else can make, and for voters to see somebody who looks more three-dimensional, that's not simply a caricature that had been sort of a part of the American dialogue for the last 25 years.

Voters don't have to love him, Romney advisers say, but they will respect him.

People are terrified for their own reputations. They want the press on their side.

I think celebrity endorsements hurt politicians.

In the run-up to the 1992 Democratic convention, Clinton's campaign realized that voters thought the young governor had a privileged upbringing. They didn't buy his alleged concern for the middle class.

But it was very hard for people to separate me out from Hillary Clinton. All their ads were Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, and me. They said I was more liberal than these guys, and that if I went to Washington I'd be supporting their agenda. I found that extremely difficult to overcome.