Mark Leibovich Quotes

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality

There's too many people that paint with a broad brush that we're all corrupt, we're all amoral. … And having these kinds of things happen, whether it's a Republican or Democratic senator — we certainly have had plenty of Democratic scandals in the past — we need people who are in office who will hold themselves to a little higher standard.

A President could be impeached only for an error of the heart, and not of the head.

If he be not impeachable whilst in office, he will spare no efforts or means whatever to get himself reelected.

In political matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his neighbours, — and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome.

You can't adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.

We need to ban outside income for elected officials. Transparency alone is not enough; it doesn't solve the problem of creating outside dependencies.

I think Evan Bayh directly should answer to the many Hoosiers I've spoken with who have questions about his ethical practices, or lack thereof, when he served in the United States Senate.

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

Given the difficulty of resisting such temptations over the longer run, a proper concern for the welfare of congressional souls may well be the ultimate argument in favor of term limitations.

I ask the vice president to stop dodging the issue with legalese, and acknowledge his continued ties with Halliburton to the American people.

I did not resign from politics because of Bofors. I resigned because I do not know how to play petty politics. I did not know back then and I don't know now either.

It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.

Only a cheap politician, greedy for political gain, would try to single out one individual for blame. The fault lies not with the individual but with the system, and that system is Richard Nixon.

No man should be in public office who can't make more money in private life.

Incorruptibility by money is the old story... Now it's incorruptibility by media.

One of the melancholy facts of political life is that your convictions tend to align with your paycheck.

The occasion for the exercise of impeachment will arise from acts of great injury to the community.

We must take, and continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized.

The presidency of the United States was an office neither to be sought nor declined. To pay money for securing it directly or indirectly, was in my opinion incorrect in principle.

Oversight now is defined as going after political appointees.

Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good with their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation.

Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to jail. It is the same thing, after all.

The purification of politics is an iridescent dream. Government is force.... The Decalogue and the Golden Rule have no place in a political campaign. The commander who lost the battle through the activity of his moral nature would be the derision and jest of history.

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