John Dickerson Quotes

This is not politics. This is garbage. And we are disgusted by it. To those who are departed who sought in some, quote, clever, unquote way, to tarnish the reputation of Tom Foley, I say, good riddance.

It wouldn’t hurt to remind the voters of what scoundrels your opponents are and to smear them at every opportunity….

Super Tuesday is the day on which most states hold their primaries. Its darker partner is Dirty Tricks Thursday: the Thursday before an election when candidates release scandalous stories to garner bad publicity for their opponent: the timing means the accused will have little time to refute the allegations.

I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction.

Sure those quotations were irrelevant, but we had one objective: to keep him [Sinclair] from becoming Governor. But because he was a good man, we were sorry we had to do it that way.

We used to try and make fools out of our political opponents. Now we try and make criminals out of them.

Wow. Ted Cruz falsely suggested Marco Rubio mocked the bible and was just forced to fire his communications director. More dirty tricks.

There's something very Nixonian about the idea of keeping an enemy's list.

I see it all the time in politics. If a candidate gets caught in a lie, he quickly tries to change the subject by throwing more mud at his opponent. The mud keeps flying until some of the slanderous material sticks.

Attacks on a politician's identity - questioning Romney's religion, say, or Obama's birthplace - tend to come when an opponent is desperate and can't sell himself.

The minute you announce as a candidate, your opponents go on a deep sea fishing expedition for your sins.

We didn't call Mr. Clinton a philandering, pot smoking draft-dodger.

If politicians throwing mud begin to slip in it, perhaps they will head for higher ground.

Reveal Richard Nixon … lay him and his motives bare … destroy him in his shot for the Presidency.

I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media.

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr claimed that his official investigation was not about sex, but about perjury and the abuse of power, yet his final report mentioned sex five hundred times. Harper’s Magazine ... claimed that Starr was intent on writing a “dirty book,” recording (and relishing) every trashy detail of a sad soap opera.

In 2008, Senator John McCain forbid his staff from using an ad that referred to his opponent Barack Obama's inflammatory former pastor Jeremiah Wright or from raising that issue in any other way. He believed it was a sneaky way to use Obama's race against him.

From 1994 to 1996, I turned over every rock in Little Rock, looking for a silver bullet that would take down the Clintons in time for the 1996 election.

One of the frustrations of the Republicans is that they have been mostly unsuccessful in equating the word Clinton with Mafia, which, to them, seems so head-smackingly obvious.

Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponent will do it for you.

It wasn't the first time. This happened to Dennis Kucinich. It happened to Jesse Jackson. They did it even to Howard Dean, creating the Dean scream. This is how they [democrats] work.

The Republican I ran against, at the end of the campaign, had decided that I was "a friend of terrorists" and "a friend of pedophiles." That's the kind of crap they came out with. I expect that's the kind of crap they'll come out with again.

The second a political consultant tries to play dirty tricks, it will backfire, and it will hurt that candidate.

On the road to the GOP nomination, Trump earned the reputation as a good debater by slandering and bullying his opponents, knocking them out with cheap shots and lies. On a crowded stage, Trump got away with these deplorable tactics.

The targeting of General Flynn was a key part of the Obama/Clinton/Deep State coup against President Trump.