Jack Germond Quotes

The reality here is, these are people that campaign for votes, and nobody wants to be associated with pictures that would certainly exist, even if they were fake, and they most likely would be. You know, can you imagine 150 pictures of that federal agent storming the home in Florida to kidnap Elian Gonzalez and send him back to Cuba?

Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.

The media can make or break an administration.

[Ronald Reagan] turned the White House into a soft focus TV studio.

Politics is television and whoever masters it is likely to win.

A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates

You certainly don't want to market the president as if he or she were a box of breakfast cereal.

The campaign for the White House is heating up with John Kerry taking heat for throwing his Vietnam medals away, getting a $1000 haircut, and wearing a 1970s wig known as 'the Leno.' There are really two sides to this story. And America can't wait for Kerry to present both of them.

Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.

Somebody is going to have to do fancy footwork to make sure Elizabeth and John Edwards get their prime-time shot .

Don't worry about polls, but if you do, don't admit it.

Did I say that the President's entire job is image management? Of course not.

Obama's people will all often complain about how trivial and silly the media is, but there's no president who's probably benefited from this sort of trivialness or superficial nature as President Obama.

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

Reaganism as a political movement has enormous resources behind it and it seeks - through stagecraft and through a tremendous level of effort toward propaganda - to present an image of Reagan that is so much larger-than-life that it sort of blinds us all, and keeps us all in a warm, happy, nostalgic state, thinking of a man who can do no wrong.

Tony Blair is not a villain, but he's played the part very well.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

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

Nixon, who spent much of his career attacking the press and saying he was a victim of the press, was in fact created by the press, in this case the L.A. Times.

No, no, no. Dick Cheney forbade me to waste time on his image. I would have liked to have done more.

The military has been determined to control the images of war since Vietnam. They're convinced that they lost the war because of loss of political support back home, because people saw what was going on.

A President has to do the image stuff that will help him so that he can do the substantive things he wants to do.

So long as cameras are there, confirmations will be drawn-out photo opportunities.

A 30 second negative ad can matter more to a candidate's career than a lifetime voting record.

Everyone in politics turns to the press, if only to manipulate it or deflect it.