David McCullough Quotes

American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.

Politics is a lot like acting. You have to be on all the time.

The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.

I was asked to write a press briefing emphasizing the positive steps the administration had taken in the area and minimizing the negative ones. I was an Assistant to the President. I have done that for several Presidents. When you’re on the staff of the President of the United States you try and make things look as good as possible.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close

There is no business like show business, Irving Berlin once proclaimed, and thirty years ago he may have been right, but not anymore. Nowadays almost every business is like show business, including politics, which has become more like show business than show business is

History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.

Politics is just show business for ugly people.

There is a thin line between politics and theatricals.

Today being President is really no different than running for President. It’s about approval ratings and photo ops and damage control and deniability.

What Mr. [Robert F.] Kennedy says lacks only the merit of being true ... Bobby Kennedy can jump off the capital dome or whatever else he has to do to get the attention of the American people.

Everything the President of the United States does is totally choreographed.

The future of politics is performance.

There's something about a new family moving into the White House that's kind of interesting, even if you didn't vote for them.

There's so much showmanship and gamesmanship involved in politics, it's really not a stretch to imagine an actor getting involved in being a figurehead for a political party. But for myself personally, I just don't think I could do that.

At best, a 100-day measurement of a new presidency is a meaningless abstraction. At worst, it's an invite to cheap politicking at the expense of the common good.

I think Obama's done a great job.

We don't need more political theater.

For sports in general, it's good to have a person in the White House who's physically fit, who loves sports, but also understands and knows how to run a country.

Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of 'em at play, either back home in their native state, or after they've been captured and sent to a zoo, or to Washington.

By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do.

At the same time, Clinton was doing a lot things right, like the economy.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.

FDR had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy. They told me, now forgotten, just how many pictures of ships they took out of the White House after he died. But he could choose good men.