Martin O'Malley Quotes

Presidents are evaluated not by what they did by the stroke of their own pen; it's what they persuade Congress to do.

I really focus on making sure that we pass good policy. I don't mind throwing my elbows around to get it done.

You can be president of the United States and have the best, most bipartisan-seeming idea in the world. But if it doesn't have a constituency, you might as well be town clerk of Toad Suck, Arkansas.

A president in his first year has a mandate and some political capital. When he picks an issue, he can practically roll any Congress.

When the President makes something a priority, we see action.

While I am grateful for the friendships and relationships that I have with my Republican colleagues, it would be naive to pretend that those friendships will change the way that major policies are enacted in Arizona.

I've got a pen and I've got a phone - and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

I changed that system in Florida when I was the Speaker of the House - I was the Minority Leader; I saw for 16 years the way a power system works.

We want an instrument of government which, however much talk is put into it, will grind out decisions at the other end.

If you can’t move the public, you can’t move the Congress.

The success of any executive measure must now be bought by the use of political patronage in influencing the action of legislators.

The Secretary of State has always stood as much alone as the historian. Required to look far ahead and around him, he measures forces unknown to party managers, and has found Congress more or less hostile since Congress first sat.

Getting members of Congress to do things they don’t want to do is a crucial part of being President.

Members of Congress often have to have testimony to hang their hat on if they wish to do something for you or do something for the country.

The more the President cares about things, the more the other people in the government will attend to them.

When I embarked in the government, it was with a determination to intermeddle not at all with the legislature.

This legislation is in the President's interest, if only the President could be brought to see it.

The social power of the Presidency is one of the most powerful tools a President can use.

Every day that I’m in office and every day I push my program, I’ll be losing part of my ability to be influential because that’s in the nature of what the President does. He uses up capital…. I want you guys to get off your asses and do everything possible to get everything in my program passed as soon as possible before the aura and the halo that surrounds me disappear.

If it comes out of Congress, I think it has traction in America.

To say that I'm going to veto something that I haven't read is just - or sign something that I haven't read - I don't think is good policy for any chief executive.

I demonstrated through my work that I can rally other people to support legislation and get it passed.

If you think of big, legislative accomplishments, most of them kind of get initiated with the president putting something out there and Congress working on it.

Political power means the capacity to regulate national life through national representatives.

I've taken legislation that people have been trying to pass for 10 or 15 years, and I got it passed.