Dick Morris Quotes About Politics
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[T]he harm [Clinton AG] Reno did to American national security in the fight against terror was incalculable.
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Today, a politician does not just need public support to win elections; he needs it to govern.
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The greater informational levels of the voters, their decreasing inhibitions in expressing disagreement, and their greater preference for Jeffersonian direct involvement, all make the need for a 'permanent campaign' to sell a president's policies all the more crucial.
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Like the battleships of old, omnibus programs present too tempting a target, too easily destroyed by a single attack, to make it through a fight.... It is through incremental change after change, step after step, that a statesman of today can vindicate a bold vision.
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Often GOP political strategy seems like the human wave theory of the Chinese military translated to politics. Where Beijing uses masses of soldiers to overwhelm their adversaries, the GOP uses huge campaign budgets as a substitute for strategy, thought or issues.
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The typical presidential staff resents the vice-president even more than they do the first lady.
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The key to running a campaign on the cheap is to avoid spending money on anything other than projecting a message.
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Rebut the negative, and the opposing campaign has not merely lost a skirmish, it has suffered almost irreparable damage. An effective rebuttal makes it hard for the campaign whose ad is destroyed to be believed about anything ever again.
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There is literally no such thing as an idea that cannot be expressed well and articulately to today's voters in thirty seconds.
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The most basic decision a modern politician must make is whether to be aggressive or conciliatory.
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The Democratic Party opposes tax cuts but it cannot say so publicly. Thus, it is forced to support the idea of lowering the tax burden but using class warfare rhetoric to dispute the allocation of the relief.
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Each morning we sat reading our copy of the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times and ruminated on their prophecies of doom and quagmire. Then we looked up to see, on television, correspondents actually embedded with our troops, reporting quick advances, one- sided firefights, melting opposition and, finally, welcoming crowds.
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The problem: Democrats have to drop their stupid class-warfare rhetoric. With 74 million Americans owning stock in one form or another, anything which helps them can't be derided as a sop to the rich.
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Spin is overrated. It is strategy, not spin, that wins elections.
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Leadership is a dynamic tension between where a politician thinks his country must go and where his voters want it to go.
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... the top 10 percent of incomes pay 70 percent of the income taxes and cast about 25 percent of the vote.
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Take whatever position you want, but do take a position, because once you do, ample money awaits you on either side.
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Despite romantic fantasies about caring candidates who learn of America in donut shops, most politicians rely on media to teach them what concerns the average person.
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The Darwinian adaptive trait of our time is the ability to figure out when we are being lied to on television.
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A politician can do what he thinks is right, he just has to be sophisticated in how he goes about it. Those who seek a president who 'will disregard the polls and just lead,' ask for the political equivalent of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade.'
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The key to controlling your own political party, so that it does not eat you alive, is to realize that while Democratic and Republican leaders differ sharply, their voters do not.
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The opposing party rarely causes so much angst as does one's own.
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If you're going to be a sexual predator, be a Democrat.
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There is no substitute for a clear vision and a decisive direction.
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The White House will run itself while the president is away. That's why he has to be sure not to be away too much.
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We in politics are accustomed to seeing reality firsthand and then watching its distant cousin, events as portrayed by the media, unfold on our televisions. We know that what happened in Congress and what is reported to have taken place are two very different things. But that disjuncture, so familiar to politicians, is new to the viewing public. By seeing war and war coverage juxtaposed nightly on their screens, Americans have learned the crucial lesson: not to trust the news anchors.
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More and more, the Democrats are not merely inconsistent, wrong and/or misguided - they are the worst of all possible things you can be in Washington: irrelevant.
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I probably had 150 meetings with Trent Lott. He has said exactly as many racist things to me as Bill Clinton has, which is to say zero.
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It is from the center that leaders must lead.
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...nobody would think of asking the U.N. General Assembly what it thinks because it is dominated by nations with no power and less legitimacy
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