Presidential Loss Quotes

A recession is when a neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

Anytime somebody loses a presidential election, there are lots of explanations.

I could have possibly beaten Senator McCain in the primary. Then I could have been the candidate who lost to Barack Obama.

It's been years, decades, since a president has lost a major trade initiative. That would be bad headlines.

Three publishers came to me at the White House after George lost and said, 'We would like to publish your book.' I said, 'Well, I don't have a book,' and they said well it's a well known fact that you have kept diaries.

In my lifetime, we have lost a President, a Civil Rights leader and a Presidential candidate - all to gun violence.

You never fully get over [losing a presidential campaign]. But I've had a good life. I've enjoyed myself 90 percent of the time.

We tried two moderate Republican candidates, McCain and Romney, and we lost both times.

When you run for president as I have, and you lose, it doesn't mean you stop caring. I care very deeply.

I supported John McCain for president. I raised a million dollars for him. Still a lot of money. I supported him. He lost. He let us down. So I never liked him as much after that because I don't like losers.

Four times Hillary Clinton has lost the presidency in eight years, a modern American record.

If you run for president and lose, you promote yourself into all sorts of more lucrative, possibly more influential and surely more fun media opportunities.

Nixon identified himself as a crisis-laden man. He'd reach levels of victory and then he'd plunge into defeat. He was vice president, then he lost to Kennedy, then he lost the California governorship. Then came a great comeback and then he blew it again - and the next comeback, after he lost the presidency. He was a man who needed the feeling of walking the precipice.

Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it).

The Republican - conservative Republican answer has always been when we lose it's because we're not ideological enough. If they lose midterm elections, that's why. If Obama defeats McCain and then Mitt Romney, it's because those two Republican candidates were not ideological enough.

I was Al Gore's campaign chairman in 2000, when he won a half-million more votes than George W. Bush but lost the presidency.