Campaign Mistakes Quotes

Rick Perry has made so many gaffes lately, it is hard to tell if he's running against President Obama or Joe Biden.

I was told that people did not like negative ads. So I didn't run any. I lost.

And I think more of a concern has been not within the campaign, the mistakes that were made, not being able to react to the circumstances that those mistakes created in a real positive and professional and helpful way for John McCain.

As a general proposition, campaigns do not linger on the vice presidential nominee. When they have, it's always meant very bad news for the ticket. Think of Spiro Agnew's foot-in-mouth disease; Tom Eagleton's medical history; the real estate holdings of Geraldine Ferraro's husband; the unbearable lightness of Dan Quayle; Sarah Palin's reading list.

There have been a lot of mistakes made in this campaign. I know because I've made most of them.

Al Gore didn't need to distance himself from Bill Clinton when he ran for president in 2000 because, when he ran, the country was in very good shape: strong economically and not at war. He did it anyway, and it was, in many people's estimate, mine included, one of the reasons he lost.

One wrong move that appears to reveal a president ensconced in a White House bubble can lose an election, such as when President George H. W. Bush was criticized for expressing interest in the capabilities of a grocery-store scanner in the early 1990s.

That line, about half of somebody's supporters being deplorables, was maybe the worst line I've ever heard in politics. You never - even when you're running against a bunch of racists, you never take off against the voters. It was a politics 101 foible.

Candidates and their consultants keep making the same mistake. They assume that all independents are bundled neatly together ideologically between Republicans and Democrats.

Democratic candidates who run from President Obama in red states where he is unpopular are making a big mistake. Their holding Obama at arm's length deprives voters of a clear choice at the ballot box.

I know it's - this is this insane analysis. Hillary Clinton lost the election because her ideas were bad. She didn't fit the electorate. She ignored states that she shouldn't have, and Donald Trump was the change agent, OK?

[Thomas] Dewey's view was that if he made no mistakes he would win So we sat around making sure he would make no mistakes. And I think we succeeded, but in fact that isn't the way it went. [Dewey lost]