Jonathan Rauch Quotes

It has been shown that public participation can limit powerful interest groups, while competing interests can help find a reasonable balance between development and environmental protection.

It's been proven in Washington: It's very hard to negotiate and try to get a deal done in public.

Ensuring we have the best possible Brexit deal will take time, effort and huge diplomatic skill.

Donald Trump is a different ball of wax. I've been trying to say for I don't know how many months now that the traditional political playbook in destroying and attacking a political opponent is not gonna work on Trump, because Trump's connection with his supporters or his audience is far deeper and far greater than most voters' connection with a candidate that's very popular. Reagan had the connection.

I respect people who are willing to deal with everything that comes with being a politician, but I'm not willing to deal with half the country rooting for you to fail. I'm a singer; I deal with enough. But at least half the country's not trying to destroy me.

There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing and sometimes be able to succeed.

To try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with the budget.

The most basic decision a modern politician must make is whether to be aggressive or conciliatory.

I would also hope that no one would think about trying to amend the constitution as a political strategy.

A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world.

Republicans are so empty-headed, they wouldn't make a good landfill.

I figured out Karl Rove's political strategy -- make gas so expensive, no Democrats can afford to go to the polls.

Narratives are not fixed. We change our narratives for ourselves and we change them not necessarily deliberately. In other words, some people do, some people will constantly reconstruct their biography for external purposes, it's a very interesting political ploy.

From Mr. [Donald] Trump's perspective, right, he simply heard [Vladimir] Putin compliment him. He then responded by complimenting him. He never thought that he might be being played.

George W. Bush has deliberately polarized and divided America for political purposes, politicizing the most basic questions of war and peace for partisan advantage.

Keith Olbermann is trying to make a business out of destroying Bill O'Reilly. He's done certain things to Bill O'Reilly that I believe were way over the line. I think that's bad behavior. But it's okay for him to criticize Bill. And Bill shouldn't be so sensitive. He should ignore that.

One of my least favorite things about being even remotely recognizable is that I'm not allowed to watch in the same way anymore. You try not to hide from the world because you want to still participate and still be inspired by what's around you.

I negotiated the proper timing and other things having to do with one of our other debates.

Democrats don't have reasons for people to vote for them. They're just trying to gin up anger and resentment for their opposition. And it's just not working anymore.

What happens if your choice is misguided, You must try to correct it But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t? Then you must find a way to live with it.

Dictatorships can exist with free markets - not that China is really a free market - especially in poor countries where the regime insists that it's a choice between food and liberty, a false choice. But increasing affluence will inevitably result in political pressure.

Don't forget: before there would be a #NeverTrump hashtag, there would have been a #NeverJeb hashtag. And a lot of people would have been on that, and they would have said they would have stuck with it. If I were Donald Trump, and I was that much in the lead - he is so much in the lead he doesn't need to keep hating on the people who are the establishment who he hates so much. Why not try to bring them along and say, "Look, I believe this party is big enough for all of us. I want to hear from you. I want to make a deal" or whatever it might be.

I admire about Hillary: Every time I am going to walk away from her candidacy, I think, she has absorbed more hate than anyone I can think of over the past twenty years, and she hasn't cracked under it. That's a kind of iron fortitude that maybe we need in the President of the United States. People project on to Hillary because she is a woman. They either hate her for everything they hate about women or they long for her to be everything they want in a woman. It's an impossible burden.

This has been the left's technique. The technique is to portray a political enemy of the left as this outrageous caveman or whatever decrepit form of humanity that you can describe, and then assume that everybody else agrees, and then cover the story as though everybody agrees.

The Iranians may simply try to run out the clock.