Jack Germond Quotes

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.

When George Bush used the Willie Horton ad, he knew what he was doing.

Obama ran a hard-edged and negative campaign against Romney, hoping to convince recession-weary voters that his rival was unworthy of the job.

Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.

One of the least appealing aspects of modern presidential candidates is that, to avoid saying anything that might prove to be an embarrassing, costly blunder, they cling to a rigid set of talking points that reveal as little as possible about what they really think and who they really are.

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

The First Law of Politics: Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

The world of messaging is the world of campaign consultants, of politicians, who are like trained seals who are given their message and then they perform. I’m not into that.

The Conservatives do not want to go into an election with the leaders' relative ratings as they are - but it is depressing to hear that plans are afoot to paint Miliband as the Michael Dukakis of British politics: part of a metropolitan elite with no understanding of mainstream concerns.

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

I understand why the Tories will be gunning for Alastair Campbell because they fear his campaigning skills.

When campaigns use one-word labels, typically it's meant to distract and destroy.

I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning the presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat would defeat President Nixon. I now think that no one could have defeated him in 1972.

What I've certainly learned is that whenever I've said anything about real politics, I've come under attack. So it's best simply to play politics on television.

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).

It's always useful for a politician to bash Congress.

Anyone who thinks that negative campaigning is a modern invention has never read the nineteenth century press

Politics ... is going to be diluted down into a 10-second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out of there.

[Commenting on negative campaigning:] On the eve of the first Tuesday in November, once again we are faced with the ugly paradox of 30-second-spot democracy: to prove they are worthy of governing us in all that we hold dear, America's politicians must behave in a way that proves they aren't.

Pete Wilson was never more than the sum total of his focus groups.

Negative politics in a primary campaign produces damaged goods but you've got to do what you've got to do.

[In a political contest,] the first guy who defines the other, wins

A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates

Nobody understood how to use television for his own purposes better than Nixon, despite his poor showing against John F. Kennedy in the televised presidential debate.

Let's remember that Bruce Rauner has every interest in getting stories out there that hurt Democrats.