Ari Melber Quotes

The noble aspirations, neat promises and slogans of a campaign get bent out of recognition or even break as you try to nail them down to the Procrustean bed of reality.

I keep my campaign promises, but I never promised to wear stockings.

Even at the end of a presidential election campaign, we have no way to know what Mitt Romney really believes.

I've been a Democrat all my life.

When people campaign for positions, they promise people all kinds of things.

All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected.

I'm actually, for the most part, a complete agnostic politically.

If you [as a Presidential candidate] identify a problem, you are going to be expected to have a solution.

When [Jimmy] Carter ran for President, he made many promises to people in big cities.... I never believed a word he said, and therefore did not believe he was lying.

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.

[Campaign] Promises forecast governance.

I am not a politician. A politician is someone who does things to get elected. He's a guy who says things to please the public, that he thinks the public wants to hear, and his story changes with every passing day. I want to be elected, but I am not going to say a damn thing for your benefit, or that person's benefit out there on the street, or anybody's

The best way to determine what a party will do is to look at what it has done.

From my experience with 5 presidential elections, candidates sometimes say things when campaigning that they don't necessacerily do when they are governing.

When he was running, my thinking was, 'I can't believe my governor is running for president.' By the end of Clinton's first year in office, I was like, 'Wow, I must not be a Democrat.'

So far, I have looked and looked for a detailed plan from Hillary Clinton's campaign that can tell me where she really stands, but there is none. It is difficult to trust that a candidate will be the right one for our community when you don't exactly know what their plan is.

Everybody runs for political office knocking somebody, and very few run on 'This is what I stand for. This is what I believe will solve these problems.'

President Obama makes fantastic stump speeches, but putting together an actual agenda is more complicated.

In any campaign you make a lot of promises and you talk about a wide range of issues. When you're elected, the work of accomplishing those goals has to be sequenced. You can't do everything at once.

I don't really worry what outside groups who score votes think. My job is to represent the people.

I think it becomes incumbent upon a candidate to essentially disavow some of the things that are in that party platform. Otherwise, I think the assumption is that you are a true believer.

I never imagined in my life that I will fight elections or form a political party.

One of the rules of running for Congress is no matter where you go, you speak like you're speaking to the whole district.

Politicians make a lot of promises when they are campaigning, and they come to towns, and people get enthusiastic about them coming to their communities. And then they don't fulfill the promises.

Of course I have had thoughts about going into politics.