Political Charm Quotes

I rarely meet a politician that I don't like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.

It was Roosevelt's genius to treat kings like commoners and commoners like kings. And both loved him for it.

[Describing John F. Kennedy:] He is sort of an Indian snake charmer.

I've had great pleasure meeting the likes of Newt Gingrich and having a chat with the fellow on a staircase. I found him completely dishonest and totally likeable, because he doesn't care! He knows what a politician is, and he's a perfect embodiment of one.

When you're running for president, you're a guest in the living room for four years. And if people don't think you're going to be around the living room as a pleasant experience, they're not going to vote for you even if they agree with you.

Courtesy is the politic witchery of great personages.

The whole Obama phenomenon brings up memories from my distant past: the good-looking guy who talks real good, whose line you don't buy immediately but whose charm is so dazzling that he gradually convinces you that this time it will be different.

I have a curious and apprehensive feeling as I watch JFK that he is sort of an Indian snake charmer.

Employing a low-key, Midwestern charisma, Mike Pence proved he knows how to win over an audience.

Generally speaking, politicians are an odd bunch. They seem to have very thick skins and genuinely don't care what people think. And charm is a very important part of the politician's armoury. I try to resist that kind of charm.

The smile of a politician is strong and friendly, but noncommittal.

In the time it takes to heat a TV dinner, Clinton had convinced me that he was the smartest person in the room and that I was the center of his attention. In the next 25 years, I would see countless others fall just as quickly to the Clinton Touch.

Bush the younger has two things going for him that his father never had. One: an easy charm with regular people and two: the power to make them disappear without a trial.

I’m supposed to be all re-injected with yes-we-can fever after the big health care speech, and it was a great speech - when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here’s the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face.

JFK [John F. Kennedy] was young, glamorous, Camelot, funny, engaging. Congress loved him.

Most of them [American politicians] are men of undoubted charm, ability, and incredible energy, and yet too often they lack purpose or appetite for anything beyond their own careers. With few notable exceptions, they are simply men who want to be loved.

Reagan refused to demonize his foes. Instead he charmed them, with a few exceptions, including Tip O'Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the embodiment of the liberalism Reagan sought to reverse.

FDR had a certain charisma, at least in his first term, with the big grin, the cigarette holder at a jaunty angle, and the battered hat on his imposing head, but no other American president since then has had it except JFK - indeed, some of them have been positively anti-charismatic, like Gerald Ford, Carter, and the Bushes.

During my seven years in office, I was in love with seventeen million French women.

He used humor more effectively than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Reagan was not an especially warm person, but he appeared to be. Many people disliked his policies, but almost no one disliked him.

Ronald Reagan was this actor who was going to be president, and he was very charming. What he had was, he talked about America in ways that got people all caught up in it. He was creating this America - it could even be the mythical "America" - that we subscribe to.

Who ever heard of a charismatic Congress?

The politician who once had to learn to flatter Kings has now to learn how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate.

Nigel Farage has got some strengths. He really connects with people. He is a very good talker. I find him very affable. I would very happily buy him a beer. And I am sure he would be happy with it to.

There's something just so kind of smooth about politicians.