Hillary Clinton Quotes

I actually prepared Vice President Biden for his debate in the last election. I played Sarah Palin. It's a little tough debating a woman.

Al Gore adopted three utterly different personas in three national presidential debates.

If you had let Frannie make you up the night of your debate with Kennedy, you would have been elected President.

Each of the participants [in a Presidential Debate] has a major objective and a minor one, in addition, of course, to appearing presidential. The major one is to get his messages across even if the questions don’t ask for them. The minor one is to avoid seeming unresponsive. That is why you will see the debaters answer some of the questions quickly, leaving time for what the candidate wants to talk about.

A candidate challenging an incumbent president has the advantage [in a debate]. The president of the United States is an awesome figure. Merely to share the platform with him on equal terms is to gain in stature: a good performance will be judged even better.

George W. Bush cannot out-talk Al Gore. Period. Mr. Gore thinks faster on his feet and is much more verbal. So if that is the criteria, Gore won the debate. But if that is the criteria, Don Rickles should be President.

You know a Senate race is obviously a much smaller deal than a presidential race. What I think makes a very hard job considerably easier when you're going to debate is if you have reminded yourself - or somebody has reminded you during the course of your campaign - that consistency is enormously important. That people don't want to hear you say one thing in one part of the state and another thing in another part of the state.

Newt Gingrich would cream Barack Obama in a debate.

Every candidate goes into every debate hoping that they can own a particular moment.

Ronald Reagan's advisors know that if he goes to sleep for even five minutes during the second debate, he'll be in trouble.

The way candidates react, immediately and usually involuntarily, while caught by the camera dominates impressions of who has “won” or “list” an encounter [political debate].

I don't think [Donald] Trump was playing rope-a-dope. He probably said, "Look, I've done these. How many debates did we do in the primaries? I know what's happening."

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all...It was pitiful...I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mr. President,' and then I felt ashamed.

When you look at that debate stage, Mitt Romney could have dominated it maybe.

[on debates] Accomplished a bit more for Bush than for Gore only because there were more question marks for Bush. I think he established that he possesses at least the minimum qualifications for being president.

During the debate, Bush was asked by a lady to name three mistakes he's made. And Bush responded, this debate, the last debate and the next debate.

People are taking a closer look at Donald Trump. I think the best look they got was at the last debate. I think Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio prosecuted their case effectively. Donald doesn't have some great answers. When they talk, for instance, about immigration and releasing those tapes from The New York Times, we began talking about flexibility and immigration.

The problem with these presidential debates like this is that you can't really prepare for them, because the questions are so individual and personal or even idiosyncratic. Secretary Hillary Clinton has a lot richer and deeper experience in doing these, obviously, than Donald Trump.

Jeb Bush brought it up at the debate and he was doing it very well, and all of a sudden, I don't know what happened, but he got shut down.

I really do not like having media moderators. Lincoln and Douglass didn't have moderators. Let the candidates ask one another questions.

Even at its most outrageous early moments, the Tea Party movement was treated to sober and at times breathless media coverage, to the point of being invited to co-host a presidential debate.

[Donald Trump] just would not be in his element and I think he would wobble off course and I think the country just can't have that.

Modern presidential debating only started with Richard Nixon and John F.Kennedy in 1960, although the proximity of that to the Lincoln-Douglas centennial is more than accidental. The reason is, I think, the medium. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were talking, but the talking was in terms of logic, development, and reasoning. Television, as a medium, resists those qualities in speaking - it favors quick cuts, one-liners, and talking points. I think the modern debates are largely the prisoners of the televised medium

I can't wait to see the debate between Ryan and Joe Biden. Biden is said to be already trying out different strategies. So far the one that Obama likes is where Biden pretends to have food poisoning and they cancel the debate.

With the presidential debates right around the corner, John Kerry is going to play Mitt Romney to help the President prepare for the debates. That's kind of a stretch; a rich white guy from Massachusetts playing a rich white guy from Massachusetts.