John Dickerson Quotes

In politics, familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds votes.

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.

Our opponents struggled manfully, desperately; but wind and tide were against them. They had campaign and other papers, good speakers, and large meetings; but we were far ahead of them in singing and electioneering emblems and mottoes which appealed to popular sympathies.

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

I recognize what [political] conventions are all about—a cross between a clambake and a pep rally.

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.

Campaigns maybe encourage us to pay attention to attributes that maybe aren't that important in the presidency.

You can't show up at a church every 4 October and say, 'Vote for me,' and call that persuasion.

The only bus tours to political events I ever went on with my father were when he was running for president. Why else would you be touring the nation in a bus?

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.

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

Presidential elections are always pocketbook elections.

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

[On political campaigns:] Get an elbow, give an elbow.

The reality of going before the voters and seeking election should force Congressmen to behave.

In something as important as an election, a little name-calling sometimes breaks out.

A political campaign is a movement. It's built around a single candidate. It will evaporate when he or she gets elected.

When the day of election approaches, visit your constituents far and wide. Treat liberally, and drink freely, in order to rise in their estimation, though you fall in your own. True, you may be called a drunken dog by some of the clean shirt and silk stocking gentry, but the real rough necks will style you a jovial fellow, their votes are certain, and frequently count double.

We [members of Congress] tend to be gregarious or we tend not to get elected.

Modern politics is really a battle between lawyers and marketeers.

Another important consideration is the great mischief of unintermitted electioneering. When the highest dignity in the State is to be conferred by popular election once in every few years, the whole intervening time is spent in what is virtually a canvass. President, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, are all electioneerers: the whole community is kept intent on the mere personalities of politics, and every public question is discussed and decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing on the presidential election.

Candidates talk about issues that voters want to hear about.

No amount of promises to the needy at election time will make the wrong policies rights; nor would lessen the enormous price we have to pay for them.

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

The reason I lost the Governor’s race to Patterson is that I was out niggered. No one is ever going to out nigger me again.