Joseph P. Kennedy Quotes

Nobody understood how to use television for his own purposes better than Nixon, despite his poor showing against John F. Kennedy in the televised presidential debate.

The 1934 Republican response to the Upton Sinclair campaign for California Governor marked a stunning advance in the art of public relations, in which advertising men now believed they could sell or destroy political candidates as they sold one brand of soap and defamed its competitor. In another twenty years, these techniques would spread East, achieve a new refinement, and begin to dominate the politics of the nation.

Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.

The First Law of Politics: Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

The world of messaging is the world of campaign consultants, of politicians, who are like trained seals who are given their message and then they perform. I’m not into that.

A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates

Almost all political campaigns involve falsity and playacting.

Sometimes, political campaigns make decent people act and talk like perfect buffoons.

Everyone loves to hate a spin doctor.

The permanent campaign is inherently deceptive.

Politics is show business for ugly people.

The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.

I understand why the Tories will be gunning for Alastair Campbell because they fear his campaigning skills.

When campaigns use one-word labels, typically it's meant to distract and destroy.

I know certain techniques, such as a press release that looks like a newscast. So you use it because you want your man to win.

Anyone who thinks that negative campaigning is a modern invention has never read the nineteenth century press

Review" is a great word in politics. It will last you almost an entire election cycle if you play it right.

Politics is the business of managing perceptions.

Modern politics is really a battle between lawyers and marketeers.

They put out statements to make themselves look good.

I have no more obligation to spin. When you’re in the White House, you spin.

Political debates, which are considered central to modern American political campaigns, appear useless as they put pressure on each candidate to put on some sort of act, to show in an impossibly brief time a superior, distinctive personality and command of the issues; the debates therefore are…fake

This is Capitol Hill where they never let facts get in the way of a good press release.

Every successful president has suffered imputations that he has in sinister fashion charmed the press or used a new medium of communication (radio, television, the Internet) to claim an undeserved standing.

Let's remember that Bruce Rauner has every interest in getting stories out there that hurt Democrats.