Gail Collins Quotes

The trouble [with modern political campaigns] is that the technicians of the media and the professional campaign advisors believe that the negative commercials and the attack work better.

We’re going to sell Jack like soap flakes. There are no accidents in politics.

Political debates, which are considered central to modern American political campaigns, appear useless as they put pressure on each candidate to put on some sort of act, to show in an impossibly brief time a superior, distinctive personality and command of the issues; the debates therefore are…fake

If I can convince people that good people don't do attack ads, and that we want good people to represent us, then the attack ads work against themselves.

Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie.

The degree to which campaigns have become dominated by marketing is breaking the spirit of democracy, and we're all just so sick of it, across party lines.

Nixon appears to be a politician with an advertising man’s approach to his work. Policies are products to be sold to the public - this one today, that one tomorrow, depending on the discounts and the state of the market. He moves from intervention to anti-intervention with the same ease and lack of anguish with which a copy writer might transfer his loyalties from Camels to Chesterfields

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

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.

A 30 second negative ad can matter more to a candidate's career than a lifetime voting record.

Odious campaigns are a national tradition, and so is complaining about them.

[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.

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

Politics is television and whoever masters it is likely to win.

If you asked me, ‘Where’s the scientific evidence of what’s adding value to a campaign?,’ I’d say field organizing. But the campaign consultants who are most famous are the strategists, especially the ones who focus on TV. And that’s where the evidence of the effectiveness of anything that people do in campaigns is the most limited.

'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.

In many campaigns, one candidate or another is asked to answer for comments he or she made in the past. The answer is usually gibberish - 'That was a long time ago,' or 'I was trying to say something else.'

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

In a political campaign, you take your position; you stay strong with it. And the Clinton campaign put out tons of stuff that was not true about Donald Trump and who President Trump is.

I don't think people in Hawaii like negative ads, whether it's done by an independent group or whether it's done by the campaign itself.

I suppose politicians have always wanted to get re-elected, but there's a kind of a feeling now that if you just discredit your opposition, it makes it easier for you to win. I don't think that's necessarily true.

I can't ever remember sitting around and saying, 'gosh let's hurry up and get these debates going, that'll win it for me.' Nope.

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

I ran two campaigns for governor in a state that's 2-1 Democrat where I did not mention my opponent in print, radio, or television. I don't know if any other politician at a gubernatorial, congressional, or a senatorial level can make the claim.