Political Acumen Quotes

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

To know how to dissimulate is the knowledge of kings.

[Theodore] Roosevelt is the most perfectly equipped and the most effective politician thus far seen in the Presidency.

All good Presidents are supple.

Anyone who knows anything about me should know by now I am certainly not exactly a good politician. I am also willing to admit to you now that I never went to any classes that had anything to do political science.

Yesterday the President had one of his busiest days. …. The corridor outside his study has been filled with gentlemen all day long. I often wonder how it is possible to adjust to so many different people and their interests in the course of a day, but after all that is one of the things every President must learn to do.

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

A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.

Every man in it is a great man—an orator, a critic, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism, and his political abilities. The consequence is that business is drawn and spun out to immeasurable length.

Among the reasons Donald Trump is president is that he read the nation and the world better than his rivals.

It really doesn't take brains to be a politician as much as it takes stomach. Both would be nice, but in America we have accepted diminishing returns in this arena.

The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.

Donald Trump has a grasp on what's important and what's marginalia.

I have been a practitioner of tough politics for many decades. There is little that amazes me and even less that shocks me.

No real-world human being brings to the U.S. presidency the range of attributes necessary for full success in the job.

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.

Roosevelt is a leader whose particular genius is to try to run other people’s business.

I don't think that experience is a very useful or convincing attribute for a sensible foreign policy. Henry Kissinger had a lot of experience.

I work with the president and speak with him multiple times a week. This is a man, he didn't become the president by accident. And as much as everyone wants to talk about stability, was he unstable when he passed the tax reform? Was he unstable when we finally hit back at Syria and said no more chemical weapons?

I was a biographer of MacArthur and Eisenhower. Eisenhower was smarter. MacArthur was more glib. When MacArthur had a problem, he turned it over to Eisenhower.

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

Even if I disagree with Obama on many, many things, he is certainly qualified to be president. He is certainly competent to be president.

President Lincoln is timid, vacillating, and inefficient.

Mr. [Judah P.] Benjamin, unquestionably, will have great influence with the President [Jefferson Davis], for he has studied his character most carefully. He will be familiar not only with his "likes" but especially his "dislikes.

This is what happens with a breakthrough. The first ones through the door often get bruised if not broken. Eventually, with a little political acumen and racial sensitivity and a lot of hard work, a smooth new place can emerge.