The essential ingredient of politics is timing.
There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.
Politics at bottom is not all that complicated. It's all about timing.
I kept careful record of the impact of religion on the election in my county. The religious issue permeated every meeting I conducted. It influenced Republicans and Democrats alike. Ministers preached politics publicly and churches distributed the most vicious electioneering materials. Practically no one I met escaped the pressure of this overriding problem and both parties were ultimately forced to make their major calculations with the religious question a foremost consideration.
Politics is about realities, not logic.
Members of Congress are less beasts of accumulating burden than computational machines designed to win re-election. Their sense of their own political interests is acute.
With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.
You always hear that politics is a function of timing and pacing.
President Obama is a poker player, which the media used as part of the narrative that he was more calculated and careful as a politician.
When I think of the person that I thought was Bill Clinton, I think he had genuine remorse. When I think of the person that I now see is 100 percent politician, I think he's sorry he got caught.
There are no personal sympathies in politics.
