Political Posturing Quotes

Politics is just show business for ugly people.

Foreign policy - dealing as it does with the most charged political subjects of all, the safety and dignity of the nation - will always be political terrain particularly vulnerable to distortion and demagoguery.

Our adversaries - our Democratic adversaries - like to be able to portray the Republican Party as a bunch of wingnuts - narrow based, always have some agenda that's not attractive to the public... That's easier for them, and more fun, than dealing with their own problems. And I think their problems are significant.

Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras....

[Politics in America is:] A chess tournament disguised as a circus.

American politics is theatre. There is a frightening emotionalism at national conventions.

I have no doubt that the Congress is active in manipulative politics.

Our generals talk a good game about taking care of their grunts, and the majority of our Beltway politicians bay with moralistic fervor about how they, too, support the troops.

There's an old joke that politics is Hollywood for ugly people. An awful lot of the press coverage about Washington reads like coverage of Hollywood. Madonna is having some spat with Sean Penn. Who cares? And who cares which politician is mad at that politician?

Republicans want to use Obamacare in the 2014 elections against Democrats who voted for it. They want to see it fail, even at the expense of people's health.

Politicians are often tempted to deploy history as a weapon against each other.

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.

Politicians are like weather vanes.

While President Obama assumes that at their core the Republican leadership team is just trying to do what's best for America, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner assume that the president is cynically trying to secure his own reelection, power, and legacy.

Individuals do matter and personalities matter in politics. But if issues are sidestepped due to personalities, then that is very dangerous.

The politician must always tell people what they want to hear.

We do not expect much from a pre-election [American] government. It is hostage to the election process.

… only an empty political formula

For years, President Obama has chastised Republicans, used immigrants as props for political purposes, and time and again deflected responsibility from his own party's failure to act on immigration reform.

Politics consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all.

Obviously, guys don't deal with the same level of criticism if they show off their bodies. Russian President Vladimir Putin literally staged a goofy shirtless photo shoot to show the people of Russia how 'handsome' and 'fit' he is. No one questioned his ability to lead a country as a result, although a lot of people did crack jokes about it.

George Bush ran a campaign where he bragged about being an anti-intellectual, dismissing his Harvard and Yale pedigree, pretending he was an American every day, ordinary everyman, and as a result of that, played up his fumbling speech because it signified that he was a good guy. That is deeply and profoundly anti-intellectual.

I am not a politician. A politician is someone who does things to get elected. He's a guy who says things to please the public, that he thinks the public wants to hear, and his story changes with every passing day. I want to be elected, but I am not going to say a damn thing for your benefit, or that person's benefit out there on the street, or anybody's

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

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.