Amy Walter Quotes
It is very difficult to deliver nuance in a campaign. Campaigns are about contrasts.
Amy Walter, Political Analyst & Political Editor, Congressional Campaign Manager (Democrat), Interview, PBS The Tavis Smiley Show, September 7, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See {599852} for the earlier origin of the Senator’s quotation.
Judges are easily attacked by those who do not like their decisions. In most cases judges can net even ethically defend themselves and so they are common victims of politicians and demagogues.
Television was a new campaign technique and the Democrats had been trying to broadcast entire Stevenson speeches. But the cost was very high and the Republicans who more quickly embraced the new political tool had been producing and running short 30 second and 1 minute advertisement “spots.” This was to the intellectuals of the day a very ethically questionable practice as it resembled advertising and marketing of consumer products. Ball in this quotation told the staff that in order to compete in the then new campaign world of television, the Democrats too would have to use “spots”—political TV advertisements. From this campaign onward, television would become the dominant political communications medium and “spots” became not only acceptable but became the dominant TV technique and the telecasting of entire speeches of the candidates would no longer be broadcast. See candidate Stephenson’s remark about the subject: #
Expert and political opinion is divided on this view. Kennedy himself did not hold it. His first year in the White House was a triumph of oratory, but he felt privately that he had failed thus far in his Presidency.
Amy E. Walter is an American political analyst, currently serving as national editor of The Cook Political Report and as a host of The Takeaway. From July 2010, she was the political director of ABC News, based in Washington, DC.
