David Gergen Quotes

John Kerry suspended his campaign for five days this week in honor of President Reagan. And right now, he's ahead in the polls. How's that make him feel? Disappears for a week and he's up in the polls. What else can he do now but go into hiding.

The times in which we're currently living unfortunately, our great leader [George W. Bush] is such a disaster and the entire country is in disastrous shape because of him. It's very frightening, actually, to think that this country has become what it's become and that so many people voted for a man like that. It's terrifying.

The public's evaluation of the job George W. Bush is doing as president changed dramatically as a result of the horrific attacks of September 11 and his response in leading the country on a campaign against terrorism.

People always related to President Bush, but in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War, his numbers collapsed because people didn't feel like he handled those properly. Obama is the inverse. He was elected because he was an extraordinary guy, but the fact that he isn't ordinary has turned out to be politically damaging.

Campaign trains always give me a little feeling of a busy factory, because so many people are busily engaged in turning out ideas to meet different situations as they arrive. If you sit in the President's car and see streams of people go by and hear him ask the inevitable questions:—"How are things in your state; did the drought do much harm; what are you people counting on to help you in your recovery", and then see him picking up everybody's ideas, discarding some, remolding some into his own speeches, you realize that you are really watching an idea factory at work, through which the American people get a picture of the President's thinking, his character, and his plans for the future.

The left and the media hope Trump is doing a Nixon in the White House. They wish he's in the corner with an adult beverage at night talking to himself because of all the misery and all the hatred. They think he desperately wants to be loved and he's figuring out that he's hated. But that is so far from the truth. Trump is reveling in it and enjoying it. I think Trump was fully aware that this was going to happen.

Tim Kaine didn't come across authentic. It wasn't good. And it was - it just really - I think, for short-term benefit, I think the Democrats tarnished the brand, which is an awfully good brand.

Certainly on a political and a legislative level, Bill Clinton was effective, but the example that he ultimately left, I think for posterity, tragically, is going to begin with that single paragraph lead with the White House intern.

Whether they love me or don't love me, they think I know what I'm doing and that people aren't gonna be taking advantage of the country. So if I had my choice, I'd love to keep doing what I'm doing. The country is in serious, serious trouble, like it's never been before. And that's why I'm saying: Would I rather stay in Trump Tower? Would I rather stay and lead the life I'm leading - and you know something about my life. It's very good.

So now the question is, basically, right now, how will the Osama Bin Laden tape affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.

I honestly believe that once people begin to understand what's at stake here, that we have a chance here not just to make our country great, but greater than it's ever been, and we have a plan to do it, I think is going to begin to influence a lot of voters, not to mention coalesce those maybe who were with someone else first around us.

I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.

I think a lot of people, not all of them, but a bunch of TV people put Donald Trump on television thinking he's making a fool of himself and thinking that he's making a fool of the GOP. I think early on that's what the Republican establishment thought. "Oh, let's hear more of this guy. He's just helping us left and right. He's digging his own grave here."

And that was always our plan. Do well in the first three states, and then compete and have a very strong night on Super Tuesday. I think we're ideally positioned to do exactly that.

Let me ask you, if Bannon leaves the White House, he resigns or is fired, and then starts and goes back to Breitbart or goes on TV and radio every night and starts down-talking Trump, is it gonna convince to you abandon Trump? It won't. But apparently there's people inside the White House who think that Bannon has that power. That nobody else, only Trump and Bannon could actually destroy the Trump connection with his base.

It doesn't matter what a majority of Americans say. George W.Bush is going to do what he thinks he must do. And history may be tough on him in the next ten years but I guess he rationalizes that in fifty or 100 years they'll bless us because there will be - maybe not in his lifetime, but someday-a democratic Iraq emulating the United States in its liberalism, in its fair-mindedness, and that democracy will spread to Iran and Syria, and that whole part of the Middle East will be happy, and terrorism will be gone, and the Israelis will be flourishing, and the oil will flow. That's his vision.

If Hillary Clinton becomes president, how is she going to be able to get the country behind her when she seems like a political figure from another era?

When I left the secretary of state office, I had a 69% approval rating. Once I start running for office and all the incoming you know is battering away, people are going to say, "Hey, wait a minute - what's that mean, what's that mean?" I get all of that, but I don't think we do any service to our country or the voters if we descend into the kind of insult fest that he seems to relish.

What I saw during the Hillary Clinton campaign [2016] with data dummies who were more concerned with polls than people, they were more concerned with donors than voters. And it wasn't a lot of heart felt on that campaign and I think it left us vulnerable.

What happened in the following years? Well, I think that among the educated classes it stayed the same. You talk about humanitarian intervention, it's like Vietnam was a humanitarian intervention. Among the public, it's quite different.

I think the White House is filled with confrontation, and is doing things to continue it. The White House and congressional Democrats think that they have the upper hand. They look at the surveys, they look at the polls, they think the Republicans are going to get blamed.

On the BSkyB bid, Rupert Murdoch is now in town in London seeking to sort things out. I would simply say to him, look how people feel about this. Look how the country has reacted with revulsion to the revelations. So do the decent and sensible thing and reconsider, think again, about your bid for BSkyB.

According to a survey in this week's Time magazine, 85% of Americans think global warming is happening. The other 15% work for the White House.

The Democrats have made the low-information voters think they care about 'em. And the worst thing you can do is invest in the Democrat Party, the worst thing, in terms of life potential.

The well of public opinion has been well and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode.