Mario Cuomo Quotes

Shockingly enough, what people say during campaigns is meant to increase the odds they get elected.

If you're in public life, a certain percentage of what you do must be done on television.

At these big set-piece events like the leaders' debates, that exterior of calm and serenity is nothing compared to what's going on inside most of the time.

Selling and telling are two different things. In politics, we sell ideas.

Political discourse has been reduced to "Where's the beef?" "Read my lips," and "Make my day." Where are the assassins when we really need them?

Hyperbole has been part of elections since the days of John Adams, and there's nobody better than Joe Biden to give us a little hyperbole, as we all know.

So I'd be quite happy to have a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Barack Obama. I'd let him use a teleprompter. I'll just rely on knowledge. We'll do fine.

I never mind doing press; it's never bothered me.

Herr Schroder has conducted two electoral campaigns, and he is doing it again now, by not telling people what is really necessary. He keeps avoiding the difficult and uncomfortable issues, those that imply changes and therefore provoke discussions.

Don't worry about polls, but if you do, don't admit it.

Kennedy did not have to run the risk of having his ideas and his words shortened and adulterated by a correspondent. This was the television era, not only in campaigning, but in holding the presidency.

I've got a really hard election. If you had a really hard election and it was after Labor Day would you go to North Carolina to a bunch of parties and glad-handing or would you stay home and work as hard as you know how to convince Missourians they should rehire you?

I wasn't the only one that saw Sarah Palin vacillate between glorious highs on the campaign trail - and, you know, while she was speaking and at the convention - to really troubling lows when she seemed stumped in interviews.

In the heat of our campaigns, we have all become accustomed to a little anger and exaggeration. Yet, on the whole, our political process has served us well.

I can't ever remember sitting around and saying, 'gosh let's hurry up and get these debates going, that'll win it for me.' Nope.

It's tough campaigning, kissing hands and shaking babies.

I've been lucky enough in 'The West Wing' and 'Brothers & Sisters' to talk about the issues that are important to me with none of the awful mud-slinging or public scrutiny you have in politics.

Al Gore adopted three utterly different personas in three national presidential debates.

I think almost every political leader is always told that the next speech they make is the most crucial one.

When you're a performer, you have to please a large audience. And when you're in politics, you have to please a large audience, too.

People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can't be attacked.

Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.

In something as important as an election, a little name-calling sometimes breaks out.

When the day of election approaches, visit your constituents far and wide. Treat liberally, and drink freely, in order to rise in their estimation, though you fall in your own. True, you may be called a drunken dog by some of the clean shirt and silk stocking gentry, but the real rough necks will style you a jovial fellow, their votes are certain, and frequently count double.

There comes a time in every political convention where I eat my words.