Simon Helberg Quotes

The first thing you've got to do in any kind of election campaign is be flexible.

It is increasingly difficult to run a campaign of substance in an atmosphere which increasingly focuses on personality.

Television has supplanted people as the only audience that campaigners are interested in.

The losing side is comforted, I think, by this idea of magical gurus [masterminding the opponent’s campaign], because it’s less disconcerting than the fact that people just didn’t like them very much.

There's a basic law, Klein's second, or third, or fourth law of politics in the TV age, which is warm always beats cold, with the exception of Richard Nixon. The nicer guy usually wins.

When I first started campaigning, I was really excited. Two-thirds of the way through, I thought, 'Why am I doing this?' Then I got really excited when I realized I was going to win.

Republicans are completely befuddled by Obama's 'star power' and don't seem to have a clear or effective strategy to compete.

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).

The hardest thing about a presidential election is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

During the last 20 years the advent of radio changed all the old rules of political campaigning. Now the successful advent of television, available for the first time this year in a presidential campaign, must again influence the planning of the campaign. Television, with its triple advantages of sight, sound and motion, can make or break a candidate, a party or a platform. In my opinion television must not be considered as supplementary media but as the heart of your program to “win friends and influence people.”

All Coolidge had to do in 1924 was to keep his mean trap shut, to be elected. All Harding had to do in 1920 was repeat “Avoid foreign entanglements.” All Hoover had to do in 1928 was to endorse Coolidge. All Roosevelt had to do in 1932 was to point to Hoover.

Review" is a great word in politics. It will last you almost an entire election cycle if you play it right.

If you can’t run against a political candidate, run against his campaign manager.

If you're going to get into the political business, you've got to be intensively competitive.

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

What is politics but persuading the public to vote for this and support that and endure these for the promises of those.

Television has become the primary precinct of politics.

When you run a campaign the idea is not to appeal to pundits but to appeal to people.

We've learned how to use the alternative media-political direct mail and talk radio and cable TV-to build our movement and convert more and more Americans to our cause. "Liberal" is now such an unpopular label with the American people that every liberal I know has run for cover and calls himself a "progressive.

During a political campaign everyone is concerned with what a candidate will do on this or that question if he is elected except the candidate; he's too busy wondering what he'll do if he isn't elected

Without television, Richard Nixon would not have a chance. He would not have a prayer of being elected because the press would not let him get through to the people.

Mo Udall wanted to run for president [in 1976] in the worst way ... and he did.

It’s a good thing in politics that candidates run against each other; otherwise no one would win.

In a campaign, impressions can be much more important than facts and debate.

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.