Eugene McCarthy Quotes

The danger with running for president is sooner or later some sound bite is going hit.

One wrong move that appears to reveal a president ensconced in a White House bubble can lose an election, such as when President George H. W. Bush was criticized for expressing interest in the capabilities of a grocery-store scanner in the early 1990s.

My children were attacked by the Minnesota media when I was governor.

To pick up the paper and read about yourself getting slammed, that doesn't start your day off right.

Sometimes, when you see the newspaper and you read something I said, you say, 'Oh, I can't believe he said that.'

Novelists, it seems to me, are the very last people who should be asked to comment on the news of the day, and sooner or later, when they have been pilloried for their views, most of them recognise this.

Once, I got slaughtered after 'Blade Runner' by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.

Politicians really worry about being politically correct.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

We may blunder on in spite of repeated miscalculations of the popular will

Anyone who gets too close to President Bush will get burned.

No one who's a politician wants to be associated with anything that is unpopular.

I'd rather be underestimated by the polltakers than by the voters.

In any operation as large as that of the federal government there are always going to be anomalies, mistakes and peccadilloes. The trick is to incite so much public (or at least media) outrage about them that the government has eventually to cut its losses rather than risk continued political damage.

The Republican high command thinks that Henry Wallace will take so many votes away from the Democrats, and so little from the Republicans, that it does not matter what the Republican Party does. Victory will be theirs, they assure themselves. When any political party gets this feeling, it is time for that party to beware.

We've talked through the fact that our family will be attacked. Our family will be dragged through the mud. My businesses that I've helped build and create will be attacked and dragged through the mud. That's politics. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it or thinking about it.

Dominant narrative is so overwhelming in politics. The smallest gaffe when the momentum is against you is a disaster. But when it is with you, everyone just ignores it.

There is nothing worse than a politician that gets defensive and starts attacking the media - and it always looks bad for the politician, because you sign up for this. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.

I look at what the polls say about attributes. I noticed in 2004 that George W. Bush led John Kerry by double digits for eight straight months on the question of who is more likely to take a position and stick with it.

I was afraid of the press.

You won't find any volatile quotes out in the press where I've run the team down publicly.

I think, at the end of the day, if voters don't see the substance and the merit of the policies you're advocating, it won't matter what you do on social media.

I think the worst thing [Donald Trump]did was the tweet the other night about illegal votes.

They don't want to get dirty and they know that Trump loves this kind of thing. And your polls, and yours are what's giving them the material that they need, it's the oxygen that the Trump campaign requires, a poll every three or four days showing him where he is.

When I left the secretary of state office, I had a 69% approval rating. Once I start running for office and all the incoming you know is battering away, people are going to say, "Hey, wait a minute - what's that mean, what's that mean?" I get all of that, but I don't think we do any service to our country or the voters if we descend into the kind of insult fest that he seems to relish.