Michael Wolff Quotes

I'm a big fan of political editor Allegra Stratton.

Covering Capitol Hill was my first assignment in political journalism, and I still think it is the best beat in Washington.

Most political journalists come to Washington because they're snappy writers, big thinkers, or news breakers. Me? My ticket to the big leagues had little to do with talent. It was mostly about the governor I was covering, Bill Clinton.

I intensely covered Bush when he was Governor of Texas.

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.

I was unknown because I came to Washington from the West. I started covering Watergate. Immodestly, I'd say I did it pretty well, in part because it was hard to go wrong.

It's not like I just have to go to Washington and go to the White House everyday, and go to the same press conference at 10 in the morning and then be briefed at 4 in the afternoon, and then get a story on at 6.

Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day.

From the late David Broder on down, the most powerful and influential of the great Washington columnists and journalists tend to cultivate the driest, least lively voices possible.

Presidential coverage used to be a very serious endeavor.

There are so many political talk shows out there that are doing such a good job that it would be foolish of me to try to get in the ring with them.

When I came to MSNBC, its identity as the place for politics was growing.

I have always been a big meta guy because I think the way journalism is practiced in Washington, and the way everyone sort of cohabitates in the same fishbowl is ultimately a bigger part of the story than people outside of the fishbowl really know.

Al Jazeera is not a tool of revolution. We do not create revolutions. However, when something of that magnitude happens, we are at the center of the coverage.

As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.

I started working as a reporter in Washington on October 1, 2013, the day the government stopped working.

The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence, we have created the perpetual presidential campaign.

Our emphasis on political coverage from the day we were born here was well-founded, and we believe there were opportunities there that we could do it in a more interesting, appealing and balanced way.

I don't have a particular go-to political blog.

Ever since Woodward and Bernstein, there's sort of been an epidemic of confidential sources in Washington, in particular where people will actually - when you call them up on the phone, they'll say, 'This is off the record,' or, 'This is on background,' or they don't even wait for you to say anything.

While I'm critical to the Bush presidency, it's been enormously beneficial for Salon because we're seen as kind of an aggressive watchdog on the Bush White House. Particularly since Florida, our readership hit a whole new level, and we held onto those readers.

In the 1970s, 'The Boys on the Bus' exposed how a clubby pack of male political reporters ruled the road to the White House and shaped the news. Four decades later, an outsider gal from Alaska has commandeered the 2012 media bus - and left Beltway journalism insiders eating her dust.

AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton, his family, friends, and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started.

I'm a journalist and that's what I do.

Let's give the conventions back to the politicians. If we think there's any news, we can tack it on afterward as commentary. But the conventions should be their show, not ours.