Kenneth M. Duberstein Quotes

Working in the White House is a relentlessly demanding responsibility.

If you're a public figure, and if you're working in the White House, you should expect everything you're saying in any context to be leaked.

I don't know that we do. I had thought ours worked well, but I had never examined it too closely. A lot of media people will be looking for a case that might make Texas Governor George Bush think twice about what he's doing.

Everyone congratulates me on being ordered to the White House, seeming to think it an exceptional honour ... but I am not over enthusiastic .... many people will try to pump one dry of White House news ...

Don’t do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of the Washington Post.

When we make a mistake, it becomes front-page news. We don't need any reporter telling us how badly we played.

I think back to some of the things Harry said and some of the things I said trying to be funny. If I said them now, it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

I vividly remember my first day on the White House staff. My office, of course, was in the Old Executive Office Building. I didn't rate one in the West Wing; but don't try to tell me or any of the rest of us working there that we weren't working in the White House.

If we could have somehow stayed away from the public and the press, it might have been different, but every private issue seemed to be played out on the front page.

That's the thing about interviews, at some point you're going to change your mind. But it's there forever and you can't escape it.

For better or worse, when you're running for mayor, there's a little bit of a spotlight on you.

You're here to sweat. This program is live. There's about one thousand million people watching you. So, you remember - one wrong word, one foolish gesture and your whole career could go down in flames. Hold that thought and have a nice night.

I feel like I owe it to the readers to try to pull back the veil and give them the honest version of what's going on. But it's not more fun. If Obama, as he does sometimes already, gets a little snippy with me about something I've written, you're thinking, 'Oh God, the president of the United States is already annoyed with me.'

My role is not to be the President’s friend….When I am no longer the Chief of Staff, I expect to be the President’s friend.

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

The most secretive White House in modern history has learned the hard way …that it must reveal a pretty steady stream of secrets.

Every President has to have a scapegoat.

... the decisive engine of impeachment.

Prime Minister’s Question time is very different from anything in America. It is something that fortunately your President does not have to face.

The President [George W. Bush] has assembled a very effective White House staff. They do not squabble among themselves, and the do not leak indiscriminately—as opposed to discriminately.

First Ladies have been through a lot by the time their husbands get to the Presidency.

I was asked to write a press briefing emphasizing the positive steps the administration had taken in the area and minimizing the negative ones. I was an Assistant to the President. I have done that for several Presidents. When you’re on the staff of the President of the United States you try and make things look as good as possible.

A mistake that is kept secret only harms the person who has committed it, but if it becomes public and is not denounced, it harms the community

The White House Chief of Staff must always remember that he is staff and not chief.

My best friend is he who rights my wrongs or reproaches my mistakes.