Mitt Romney Quotes

Somebody is going to have to do fancy footwork to make sure Elizabeth and John Edwards get their prime-time shot .

Sometimes heads of state have to make statements for [local] public consumption.

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

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

It's fun to toy around with press stuff a little bit, because in many ways it's not a real world.

The reality is [Donald] Trump is just better at this game than they are. Blaming the media may be a convenient foil, but the reality is, he's played the free media game better than they have. He has used the personal attack meme against them and literally created memes about them. They need to figure out how to play this game.

Donald Trump is not intimidated by the media, and he's not frightened by them, and in fact he loves toying with them. You know, while they're sitting there wringing their hands and taking things so seriously and it's the end of the world, Trump is laughing and having the greatest time.

As I have said, the best Bush strategy is to put Congress on TV as often as possible.

Politicians have always been required to be fake, but now the career havoc wrought by a stray, flying sound bite means they have to sustain their fakeness all the time.

In politics you learn to always smile.

Did I say that the President's entire job is image management? Of course not.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e., 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

I don't stage my own publicity.

Pictures can be devastating. Who allowed John Kerry to get himself photographed windsurfing in a flowered swimsuit? Anyone in the real world in that operation?

The genius of David Petraeus has always been his masterful manipulation of the media.

Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience.

One of the least appealing aspects of modern presidential candidates is that, to avoid saying anything that might prove to be an embarrassing, costly blunder, they cling to a rigid set of talking points that reveal as little as possible about what they really think and who they really are.

Obama has figured out the best method to prepare the way for his verbal Houdini acts: Use political noise as the tune-up din before the aria. Perhaps his body temperature is so low, it sometimes takes him too long to break out the song.

No, no, no. Dick Cheney forbade me to waste time on his image. I would have liked to have done more.

What I've certainly learned is that whenever I've said anything about real politics, I've come under attack. So it's best simply to play politics on television.

People say I manipulate the media. Well, duh. We live in a media culture, so why on earth wouldn't I?

A President has to do the image stuff that will help him so that he can do the substantive things he wants to do.

Congressional investigations are for the benefit of photographers.

A summit is a photo opportunity featuring two or more heads of government who have no business to transact, but believe a set of smiley photos will do them a lot of good politically.

Everyone in politics turns to the press, if only to manipulate it or deflect it.