Candidate Strategy Quotes

I gave Romney some advice. I said “Mitt, just relax and be one of your selves.”

In every election cycle that I can recall, there comes a moment - or a few - where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and shield: 'Vote for me 'cause I'm one of you. It's the other guy who's out of touch.'

I think it is a mistake for candidates, or once they get elected in office, to be dwelling too much on the topic of markets.

Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton is focusing on a different part of the voters trying to influence them in her own way as well; so they attack each other [with Donald Trump].

Successful candidates follow a simple fundamental rule: Define yourself before your opponent can define you.

If you can’t run against a political candidate, run against his campaign manager.

Television has accustomed us to brief, intimate, telegraphic, visual, narrative messages. Candidates are learning to act, speak, and think in television's terms. In the process they are transforming speeches, debates, and their appearances in news into ads.

And if I were the president, I'd go out there and I'd emphasize the things I have done, and I'd say, 'Some things haven't worked, and I'm sorry about that, but I keep trying.' And I'm - and I think the president is a very viable candidate, and you're going to have a real horse race here no matter who the Republican nominee is.

Because liberalism typically doesn't sell in American presidential politics, liberal candidates tend to run as culturally conservative centrists.

The conservative candidate who ignores moderates is as misguided as the moderate candidate who ignores conservatives.

Every candidate goes into every debate hoping that they can own a particular moment.

Each of the participants [in a Presidential Debate] has a major objective and a minor one, in addition, of course, to appearing presidential. The major one is to get his messages across even if the questions don’t ask for them. The minor one is to avoid seeming unresponsive. That is why you will see the debaters answer some of the questions quickly, leaving time for what the candidate wants to talk about.

Mandates are not objective realities but subjective interpretations of elections sold successfully by the winning candidate or party.

I was the first candidate to announce my run on Instagram. So that was kind of cool.

If you're running to be president of the United States, you can't just tell people you're going to make America great again. I think you need to begin to explain exactly how you're going to do it policy-wise. We're not going to win a general election with a candidate that refuses to detail policy.

I think Romney's foreign policy is sensible.

People have no idea what it's like to be that person in the arena. I know, no offense, but a lot of people on television, talking heads and analysts and consultants and strategists and they all have their opinions and they tell what a candidate ought to do, what he should have done, what he could have done. But they've never been in at arena.

Candidates talk about issues that voters want to hear about.

If you're a white candidate, it is twice as important for you to be talking about racial inequity and not just describing the problem - which is fashionable in politics - but actually talking about what we're going to do about it and describing the outcomes we're trying to solve for.

Compare and contrast: Donald Trump is going out thanking the voters who supported him. You look at his cabinet picks. They are not donors. These three military guys are not being chosen because they're being paid back for donating to Trump. He's picking them because they're the best. And what's Hillary Clinton doing? She is thanking the money people. She's not thanking supporters. She's not thanking people who believed in her for her ideas and substance and her personally.

Naming a transition team varies with the intentions of the candidate; some candidates have been careful to name a transition team as much as a year in advance.