Policy Evaluation Quotes

A candidate’s command of foreign policy acts as a proxy for assessing broader leadership abilities.

Foreign policy should not be justified through making oneself feel good, but through results that have tangible consequences.

In terms of politics, I just look at people's policies, and sometimes I agree with something, sometimes I won't.

Too many policies, programs and institutions are judged by what they are supposed to do, rather than by what they actually do and the consequences of their actions.

The first lesson that you must learn is that, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.

A profession is a body of men who voluntarily measure their work by a higher standard than their clients demand. To be professionally acceptable, a policy must be sound as well as salable. Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.

It's easy to defend a policy that works. It's not so easy to defend a policy that didn't work.

When government programs aren't working, those on the Left tend to support more funding, while those on the Right want to scrap them altogether. It is better to ask whether the problem is complexity and poor design. We can solve those problems - sometimes without spending a penny.

I got nothing against Barack Obama; I just might not like some of his policies and the people he surrounds himself with.

We must stand our ground to ensure that our laws reduce violence and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent.

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.

Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.

I think what we need to do is understand our number one obligation is to act in the national interest of the United States of America. I believe it is in our national interest to see democracy take hold on the island of Cuba. And so we examine our foreign policy, including all the changes that President Obama made, in that lens and through that lens.

There is no justification for continuing an unconstitutional policy with a zero percent success rate.

All policy is targeted in one way or another.

Successful and unsuccessful political policies have one commonalty. The people who created the policies thought they would be successful.

I learned that you have to evaluate the effects of public policy as opposed to intentions.

You have to have a sense of what it looks like, not from the point of view of the policymaker but from the point of view of those who are at the receiving end of your policies.

The difference between a policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, while a crusade is judged by how good it makes its crusaders feel.

In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them.

In a mature democracy any proposed policy should be subjected to a close analysis of its likely benefits and costs.

Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'

There are 3 questions that would destroy most of the arguments of the Left. The first is - compared to what? The second is - at what cost? And the third is - what hard evidence do you have?

With the policymaking process, you have an idea, and you try to sell other stakeholders on the idea. That's not much different than in business, where you're trying to find capital to make your idea a reality.