Domestic Politics Quotes

I was deep into it - worldwide liberation politics as well as domestic - but by the end of the '80s, I had decided it all comes down to one single issue: campaign-finance elimination.

In my opinion, it is not in our interest to have complicated negotiations with a region, and then have to follow it up with 535 negotiations at home. I have experienced recounts, and it is better to vote once.

We have a petticoat government. Mrs. Wilson is president.

We should not pretend that we can remake the domestic structures of governments all over the world.

It is not Russia that threatens the United States so much as Mississippi.

Donald Trump himself actually said during his campaign that he essentially thinks being unpredictable is a good thing. Maybe that's a good thing in domestic politics, but in foreign policy, that is really stupid.

Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Congressional sloth in recent years has hit mind-boggling new lows. It’s partly systemic, rooted in a mandatory spending regime that accounts for two-thirds of government dollars and runs on autopilot. That disconnect now imbues every aspect of governance. In the nearly 50 years since Congress created our current system of budgeting and appropriations, it’s managed to complete the process correctly four times. It last did so 25 years ago. The default is massive omnibus bills that are passed hours after release, minutes before the government shuts down for lack of funds.

All recent U.S. presidents have learned the hard way that, despite their immense power, they remain at the mercy of uncontrollable global forces that render their personal views and campaign promises largely irrelevant.

Foreign policy can be the undoing of absolute rulers, tempted to foreign adventure in order to compensate for failure at home or spurred on by domestic adulation.

The main challenge for American foreign policy in many places is not to influence relations between states but rather to influence events within states.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

The defense…that the United Nations could not interfere with any member’s domestic concerns was a sentiment with which all UN members concurred, all having something to hide.

In domestic politics, presidents rarely wield independent power; what they wield is influence. Power is the capacity to make people do what you want them to do; influence is the ability to make them want what you want, at least temporarily.

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

Historians partial to Kennedy see matters differently from those partial to L.B.J. Vietnam has become a point of contention in defending and criticizing J.F.K.

Without democracy in our homes, we will never have it in the world.

At least on the domestic side of things that you're seeing, [Mike] Pence has that influence big time. But when it comes with what political fights to have?

In spite of your “liberty of the press”, at a hint from your government your whole national press becomes unanimous on questions outside domestic politics.

We are not engaged in domestic politics, in church building or in social uplift work, but we are engaged in nation building.

In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.

Even heads of our own security agency said, you know, we need to take a deep breath on this. This really doesn't seem to be happening [that Russians are trying to influence American domestic politics ].

As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there.

The way you change foreign policy is by raising the domestic political cost of the policy.

The first thing a diplomat has to do is understand the domestic politics of foreign states.