Kenneth Hechler Quotes

It is therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation.

When any member is about to speak in debate, or deliver any matter to the house, he shall rise from his feet and respectfully address himself to “Mr. Speaker.”

If you're running for reelection in the House of Representatives race, you know, it's very important to you that you be on fairly good terms with the local affiliates in the largest market in your area. I mean you don't want to antagonize them.

Politics is just show business for ugly people.

The House of Representatives eliminated the filibuster way back in the 19th century, and somehow it managed to survive.

Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience.

The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.

This shuffling trick of misstating the question, and setting up a man of straw to make a pompous demonstration of knocking him down, is the measure of the capacity of [Congressman] Edward Black and of the majority of the House [of Representatives].

Every man in it is a great man—an orator, a critic, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism, and his political abilities. The consequence is that business is drawn and spun out to immeasurable length.

When the snake is already in the house, one need not discuss the matter for long.

Mr. Chairman, I desire to say to those present that their perfect attention will not embarrass me in the least.

The whole art of a political speech is to put nothing into it. It is much more difficult than it sounds.

[Congressional] investigations only make it look like legislators have a solution.

Politicians are ambitious not to make important decisions but to say important things.

Be a hypocrite if you like, but don't talk like one.

I observe that the House of Representatives are sensible of the ill effects of the long speeches in their house on their proceedings. But they have a worse effect in the disgust they excite among the people, and the disposition they are producing to transfer their confidence from the legislature to the executive branch, which would soon sap our Constitution. These speeches, therefore, are less and less read, and if continued, will cease to be read at all.

Every administration is theater because this is the nature of public life in America.

Sometimes heads of state have to make statements for [local] public consumption.

Everything the President of the United States does is totally choreographed.

The “cant” of the politician, like the cant of the “religious” man, is also protean in its guise, but its chief method is to explain away words. The politician can always show you that he didn’t mean what he says, but something rather different from what he says. Political cant consists in pretending to agreement with hearers, whoever they may be. This cant is part of the stock-in-trade of every politician, be he Tory, Whig, or Radical, and it is by its means that he tries to haul in stray votes.

He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.

Political debates, which are considered central to modern American political campaigns, appear useless as they put pressure on each candidate to put on some sort of act, to show in an impossibly brief time a superior, distinctive personality and command of the issues; the debates therefore are…fake

On Capitol Hill we like to make tough speeches. We don’t like to make tough choices.

Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them.

A typical vice of American politics — the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement.