Neal Boortz Quotes

The senator had taken positions that were sometimes unpopular with voters.

The president had served two terms. The Constitution, passed in 1993 and endorsed by him, prohibited a third term. However, by 1999 he was considering a third term. There appeared to be no one in his political party who could beat the opposition who had been very critical of his autocratic Presidency.

This is an important quotation because it was believed by most of the Founding Fathers and the American public until relatively recently. Presidential candidates would not think of publicly campaigning. The view was that anyone who was ambitious for power and authority should not be trusted with it. The idea was first stated by Plato and has been a major view of Western politics since. Many still believe it, but no one has come up with a practical alternative in a large jurisdiction where there is no way to know about the possible candidates without their initiative. Earlier American presidential candidates, although they did not campaign as we know it, got associates to do their campaigning for them. At Presidential nominating conventions, candidates would not even attend. Abraham Lincoln for example never attended the convention at which he got nominated, but he had associates lining up delagates and he was managing their efforts behind the scenes.

In the English political system the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch are the same. In the House of Commons, the Front Benches are reserved for the Cabinet Ministers. The argument here is that when politicians become ministers, their career and party success often become more important than the welfare of the country.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910

When Disraeli first entered politics and tried to run for Parliament the notion that he would ever become Prime Minister was very unrealistic to everyone except Disraeli. In addition to no political experience at the time, he came from a Jewish background at a time when anti-Semitism was very common and acceptable to England. Even if he were not inexperienced and Jewish, he was not part of the British aristocracy and was not socially connected. He also had no large business and industrial connections and no important family connections. However, he was a marvelous writer and speaker, a very fast learner, and turned out to be a political natural. Most historians rate him as one of the two or three greatest British Prime Ministers.

The Republicans who won control of Congress in 2000 with a Republican President had campaigned on the principle of smaller government and no deficits. In the next 8 years they spent more than any Congress in history and twice as much as President Clinton had in the previous 8 years not counting military spending and entitlements which were much greater.