Jim Bolger Quotes

If you can’t bring the people with you, you lose the policy

All politicians find it hard to address with conviction more than one emergency at a time.

Unfortunately, I think it's very difficult to separate policy from politics. In a perfect world, in some instances, you probably would want to. In other instances, you'd probably say that the political element is important because it should, in a perfect world, match what the stakeholders need or want, or what the public is after.

I can't understand why anyone would want to live the life of a politician if you can't say pretty much what you think. You are not in it for the money: there's unremitting pressure on your life, you give up so much of your privacy. It can only be because of the things you want to do and the things you want to say.

It is a fact that governments tend to put in place policies and strategies in response to current scenarios.

Obama is capable - as evidenced by his first-term success with health care reform. But mandate-building requires humility, a trait not easily associated with him.

Washington, D.C. is full of think tanks, theoreticians and advocacy groups. Governors are the ones whose feet are on the ground.

Of course we are looking to win support across every section of society. We win support by speaking to voters on the issues they most care about.

In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them.

Any government, of whatever composition, needs to mobilise opinion way beyond its own ranks in order to do the difficult things that it does.

If public opinion still endorses military action that's one thing, but if they wait maybe it will not. So it's not only impatience, but there are several other factors.

I will, based on the existing ROC constitutional system, based on democratic principles, on the basis of the largest public opinion, promote cross-strait policy.

The dominant color of politics is gray; difficult choices and compromise are required at almost every step of the journey toward a major new program.

I noticed that the highly organized lobbies in Washington were producing results regardless of the justice or injustice of their demand.

If you can’t move the public, you can’t move the Congress.

Waning public support for a war tends to influence even the most stubborn of presidents

Democracy and elections can be a double-edged sword … democratic competition and elections increase the politicians’ appetite for gaining public support by pleasing the public, which is sometimes led by emotional motives and short-sighted considerations. Populist politics can sometimes be driven by a lack of knowledge and is not always conducive to the real interest …

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time.

You have a lot of support right now, but once you get a lot of casualties, this thing is going to change.

What Congress does is respond to pressures that are upon it.

Politicians worry about downside political risks. Generally speaking, they are risk minimizers.

Politicians are ready to suspend their beliefs or policy positions in the name of electoral success. When belief collides with public opinion, belief often goes.

Sometimes political parties have a very short window to influence public policy

For elites, the politics of governing is seen as a continual struggle to manage public emotions so that they do not overwhelm sound public policy.

Politicians livelihoods depend on what people think.