Political Advisors Quotes

Politics. Where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be a candidate themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.

When I first went to work in the West Wing, the most daunting thing was how small this place was... You walk in: it's three floors, and there's a few offices on each floor, and that's it.

White House staff spends enormous amounts of time planning a president's every move so that his public persona reflects the mood of the public.

Everything I ever suggested for 'The West Wing' comes from my work with Senator Moynihan.

On the Wednesday evening - that is, the day I saw her Majesty on this particular point - I had the opportunity of conferring with all those whom I proposed to submit to her Majesty as Ministers.

I'm deciding where I am best for this president-elect [Donald Trump] and this vice president-elect [Mike Pence] in due course. But there are many qualified men and women who can serve him at the highest levels.

If you're a speech writer for a president, you don't really see all that much of him because there's so many layers between you and him. But with a vice president, it's different.

Plenty of candidates don’t write their own foreign policy position papers, but Romney is unusual in that he seems not to have even read his.

Donald Trump won the campaign, and I was empowered by Jared Kushner and lucky to be around people like Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.

Sometimes Jonathan [Powell] and myself would go to Tony [Blair] and ask him if he was absolutely sure about this or that. That was our job. But ultimately it was his decision.

I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.

The outcome of an election depends on the candidate, not the people on the sidelines [advisors, handlers, etc.]

The only way a President-elect is ever going to get the sort of cabinet he himself wants is to shoot out his list right at the beginning, consulting nobody and sticking to his first selections. The minute he begins asking advice he is in trouble.

There was no one at the table [of a Cabinet meeting] who could be of help to me except the President, and when I needed to consult him I did not choose a Cabinet meeting to do so.

If you look at the people who are advising Rudy Giuliani it turns out that they seem to be all the people who were too insane or too extremist to even get on the George W. Bush team.

One of the worries about a presidency is that everybody tells you yes. Nobody helps you figure out where your blind spots are.

Many chiefs of staff are close, very close, to their bosses on Capitol Hill.

The next big decision [of Donald Trump], chief of staff. And the two names talked about the most, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus. Both allies, but they send quite a different message.

Jennifer Palmieri and Joel Benenson and all these people on Hillary's [Clinton] side just can't come to grips with the fact that they lost.

I ran for president. I ran for governor twice. And I've been the governor now for nearly seven years. I find that the people who are my best advisors are the people who are smart enough to give me really good advice and smart enough to keep their mouths shut about what advice they give me. And so if I want advisors that way, that's the kind of advisor I'm going to be for Donald Trump.

If I were president, I am not sure that I would offer Ed Rendell the job of chief of staff.

I don't think voters give a hoot about the character of their political advisors, except to the extent that character reflects on the candidates.

... the persons who control the President's rhetoric exert an enormous influence over his actions and policies.

Do you know how many congressional liaisons we are going to have? I don't either, but I told Pence, it should be four times whatever Obama had. I don't know how many he had, but I'm telling you that didn't work out.

When you work in the White House you talk to the White House staff all day, so you're talking to the guy who handles the congressional liaison and the guy who's handling domestic politics and the guy who's handling the American economy and so forth.