Marlin Fitzwater Quotes
This strategy represents our policy for all time. Until it's changed.
Marlin Fitzwater, White House Press Secretary (Republican), Quoted in Newsweek, April 2, 1990
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
For a later expression of this idea see Henry A. Kissinger {610343}.
The dramatic thing about this quotation is that in public, the mantra of conservatives about the courts of America is that they make and change laws as opposed to just interpreting and clarifying the laws. They traditionally accuse judges who rule against their favorite positions as using the courts as an instrument of political and social change. Here a leading conservative federal jurist, who thereafter became a member of the Supreme Court, was acknowledging and advocating the courts as instruments for conservative social, economic, and political change.
This quotation was sent by Josephus Daniels to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936 for use in his fireside chats.
See FDR’s quotations {32446} & {642798} on experimentation for an extension of Jefferson’s hope.
Politics is peculiar in the sense that most things are seen as black or white. In most other areas of human endeavor, people change, not because the old way was incorrect, but because the new way might be better. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity did not totally invalidate the physics of Issac Newton; it just improved on it in some areas.
Max Marlin Fitzwater is an American writer-journalist who served as White House Press Secretary for six years under U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, making him one of the longest-serving press secretaries in history. He is the only U.S. Press Secretary to be appointed by two different U.S. Presidents (Stephen Early and Pierre Salinger served as transition press secretaries for a few weeks and a few months, respectively).
