Allen C. Guelzo Quotes

Television has accustomed us to brief, intimate, telegraphic, visual, narrative messages. Candidates are learning to act, speak, and think in television's terms. In the process they are transforming speeches, debates, and their appearances in news into ads.

I had to try and talk in 30 seconds clips. The modern young candidates ... can talk in 10 seconds or 20. You just tell them what you want. The old politicians like me take three weeks to answer a question.

I am satisfied that all politicians were meant to be journalists and all journalists meant to be politicians.

Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.

I have serious doubts about the value of debates in a presidential election. They tend to be a test of reaction time rather than a genuine exposition of the participants' philosophies and programs

Presidents today spend more time speaking than they do reading or thinking.

Unfortunately when we get to the “debates” as we all know these are never debates. There are questions where there is never a follow up, where you ask a question and I the candidate give an answer that has nothing to do with your question, and then we go on and somebody else asks the other person and back and forth. It is not just the fault of the candidates. We tend to have to have a simple short answer to complex problems for the sound byte requirements of modern journalism and perhaps the education levels of the average citizen. Complex problems can’t be reduced to that.

From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery, and a sense of timing.

When considering real-world issues, particularly those that touch on science and technology, it is harder to speak in platitudes or rely purely on emotion or fear. Substance, or its lack, becomes harder to mimic or mask, which is why I wish we had a true televised presidential debate on these subjects.

I really do not like having media moderators. Lincoln and Douglass didn't have moderators. Let the candidates ask one another questions.

The presidential and vice-presidential debates are those rare moments when people come together, but to even call them debates is a stretch because they're played by such negotiated rules, and they're so over-rehearsed.

I've watched presidential debates since I was a teen, and I love it.

When the presidential debates are on, I'll watch that like it's the Super Bowl. I actually thoroughly enjoy that. I always have.

Debates are set up for nothing more than to tear down the candidates. It's pretty hard to be able to sit and lay out your ideas and your concepts with a one-minute response.

I don't read newspapers too much , just because they tend to make me feel I have a political obligation that I think is a distraction from what my political offerings are going to be if I just make my movies.

Even if you're trying to remain objective, even if you're trying not to mount any campaigns or endorse anything, when you cover an issue you are at least encouraging people to think about all the possibilities and if you're not covering political reform, electoral reform, you can write stories about them that don't say we must do this but just educate people on the fact that there are various advocates who are tugging us in that direction, that can present the arguments of those advocates, and I do think that's an issue we for some reason completely turned away from.

Obama's style of argumentation is unlike any president I have ever met, and I've met a lot of them. And the condescension that oozes from him when he's talking about his opponents, it's really striking.

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

The more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has in life.

I do think of my reader, or listener, really, more often, if I give a lecture, for example, and I know that I'm talking to these people; I enjoy sort of preening them a bit. But it's a matter of decorum, basically.

I spent four and a half hours debating Donald Trump in three debates, which I think should put to rest any questions about my stamina.

I think it's a scary sign of the times that pop culture and social media is so involved [in presidential election ], where it feels like a reality show. I have hope that the right decision will be made.

Donald Trump has been saying that I think for as long as I've been listening to him of late, and that's what he's going to do.

I think what we journalists too often do is we assume the status quo is unchangeable. I think all sorts of issues of political reform, electoral reform need more discussion than they get.

I am sort of proud that I think radio has become a dominant influence in shaping public opinion. Good radio paints the picture for the audience. The audience has to be actively involved. Sometimes, in television, you can get lulled into sleep watching the picture, not listening to what you're hearing.