Richard N. Haass Quotes

Hyperbole has been part of elections since the days of John Adams, and there's nobody better than Joe Biden to give us a little hyperbole, as we all know.

We don't have to do what candidates do—talk about huge issues for 30 seconds in a field somewhere trying to make sure that cows do no urinate on our shoes.

I can't ever remember sitting around and saying, 'gosh let's hurry up and get these debates going, that'll win it for me.' Nope.

You cannot take any statement very seriously when it is made in an election context.

The First Law of Politics: Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

You call my candidate a horse thief, and I call yours a lunatic, and we both of us know it's just till election day. It's an American custom, like eating corn on the cob. And, afterwards, we settle down quite peaceably and agree we've got a pretty good country - until next election.

Selling and telling are two different things. In politics, we sell ideas.

I really deplore the tone of his campaign and the inflammatory rhetoric that he is using to divide people. I don't know that Donald Trump has any boundaries at all.

Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game.

Kennedy did not have to run the risk of having his ideas and his words shortened and adulterated by a correspondent. This was the television era, not only in campaigning, but in holding the presidency.

I've got a really hard election. If you had a really hard election and it was after Labor Day would you go to North Carolina to a bunch of parties and glad-handing or would you stay home and work as hard as you know how to convince Missourians they should rehire you?

Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president.

In the heat of our campaigns, we have all become accustomed to a little anger and exaggeration. Yet, on the whole, our political process has served us well.

A very powerful mechanism to get elected is to play on anger and pick those wedge issues.

Modern political speechwriting is not a high-minded pursuit for brilliant talents.

All Coolidge had to do in 1924 was to keep his mean trap shut, to be elected. All Harding had to do in 1920 was repeat “Avoid foreign entanglements.” All Hoover had to do in 1928 was to endorse Coolidge. All Roosevelt had to do in 1932 was to point to Hoover.

Voters never grow weary of illusory promises.

The first thing you've got to do in any kind of election campaign is be flexible.

In something as important as an election, a little name-calling sometimes breaks out.

When the day of election approaches, visit your constituents far and wide. Treat liberally, and drink freely, in order to rise in their estimation, though you fall in your own. True, you may be called a drunken dog by some of the clean shirt and silk stocking gentry, but the real rough necks will style you a jovial fellow, their votes are certain, and frequently count double.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

Another important consideration is the great mischief of unintermitted electioneering. When the highest dignity in the State is to be conferred by popular election once in every few years, the whole intervening time is spent in what is virtually a canvass. President, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, are all electioneerers: the whole community is kept intent on the mere personalities of politics, and every public question is discussed and decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing on the presidential election.

We elect people who are good at getting elected rather than good at representing.

Trace out also individuals in every region, inform yourself about them, seek them out, secure that in their own districts they shall canvas for you, and be, as it were, candidates in your interest.

The most successful political candidates will be those who can tap American anger without becoming a target.