James Wolcott Quotes

Politics is a lot like acting. You have to be on all the time.

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

It is kind of tedious after a while, to parse politicians doing the same thing over and over again. The facts change from week to week, but the sort of masquerade doesn't.

Politics is just show business for ugly people.

American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.

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

By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do.

I have criticisms of Ronald Reagan, but he lives in another universe from the kind of political theater that is represented by people, like Sarah Palin, who aren't really public servants.

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

There is a temptation in politics to look for simplistic slogans and to play the game in a way that looks like you're a savvy politician.

Politicians are part fake, part substance.

What Mr. [Robert F.] Kennedy says lacks only the merit of being true ... Bobby Kennedy can jump off the capital dome or whatever else he has to do to get the attention of the American people.

Ronald Reagan plays with fire! He sees the world like the theater.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close

The future of politics is performance.

If you construct political narratives around the psychodramas of politicians, even when they don't invite it, you open the way for those who can play this game more effectively.

There's so much showmanship and gamesmanship involved in politics, it's really not a stretch to imagine an actor getting involved in being a figurehead for a political party. But for myself personally, I just don't think I could do that.

We don't need more political theater.

Politics and acting are very closely tied. The job is to convince.

They say that politics is show business for ugly people, but as I always crack, what would I know about that? I like a challenge

To cover politics in Washington allows you to live in the very, very wide gap between what the actual truth is, and how people are trying to manipulate the truth. They speak in the language of spin, obsequiousness, obfuscation. The meta of politics is just this endless source of material that can shed light on the psychology of the process.

There's an old joke that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. An awful lot of the press coverage about Washington reads like coverage of Hollywood. Madonna is having some spat with Sean Penn. Who cares? And who cares which politician is mad at that politician?

In politics, it's very theatrical. There's a lot of stage craft. The campaign is trying to tell a story that they want people to believe in, and candidates are playing the role, like actors, by a creative personae that people will be attracted to.

Some politicians denounce government in order to capture the government and then they turn around and expand the government.

Even for a President who is not a professional actor, misrepresentation is a part of the job. Commentators who do not bear this in mind are like critics in the audience shouting, “Tell us what you really think” at an actor who is trying to bring off his drama.