Quotes About Presidential Campaigns

“When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.”

— John W. Gardner

“The "evils of faction" theme recurs throughout our history, from the writings of the "muckrakers" at the turn of the twentieth century to the Democratic presidential primary campaigns of 2008 with talk of Halliburton's contracts in Iraq and the shady practices of sub-prime mortgage lenders.”

— Edward S. Greenberg

“He hated House members who longed only to run for the Senate, and senators who longed only to run for the presidency. He was appalled by what he felt television had done to the Senate by the mid-fifties. It had become a major launching platform for presidential campaigns. He thought television had ruined the Senate as a serious body. All they do there is preen and comb their hair and run for President. It's like a presidential primary over there,”

— David Halberstam

“President Ronald Reagan, who spent World War II in Hollywood, vividly described his own role in liberating Nazi concentration camp victims. Living in the film world, he apparently confused a movie he had seen with a reality he had not. On many occasions in his Presidential campaigns, Mr. Reagan told an epic story of World War II courage and sacrifice, an inspiration for all of us. Only it never happened; it was the plot of the movie A Wing and a Prayer - that made quite an impression on me, too, when I saw it at age 9. Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements. It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction.”

— Carl Sagan

“Let's not overlook, though, what we do know about the campaign finance scandal, and the fact the Chinese were involved in our presidential campaign and our congressional campaigns.”

— Fred Thompson

“Ultimately, presidential campaigns are - or at least should be - about the candidates, not their spouses or surrogates.”

— Andrew Rosenthal

“Four years in the White House and two presidential campaigns is an awful long time. In politics, every year in the White House is like dog years, six years off your life.”

— George Stephanopoulos

“In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.”

— Mark Shields

“Grassroots organizing tends to be most available to big campaigns, but it's actually most useful to small ones. You can't win a presidential campaign without going on TV, but you can win a local election simply by organizing your community. NationBuilder levels the playing field.”

— Joe Green

“It strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.”

— John Ortberg

“Nowhere has the political power of coal been more obvious than in presidential campaigns.”

— Jeff Goodell

“The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races.”

— Robert McChesney

“As someone who's been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new.”

— Dan Rather

“Presidential campaigns are exhausting. Once they're over, we all heave a sigh of relief that we have our lives back, the constant emails and news reports no longer harangue us, and the topic even turns at times to something else entirely.”

— Marianne Williamson

“The press doesn't just cover presidential campaigns, they influence them by making arbitrary decisions about who is 'top tier' and merits coverage.”

— Mark McKinnon

“As a general proposition, campaigns do not linger on the vice presidential nominee. When they have, it's always meant very bad news for the ticket. Think of Spiro Agnew's foot-in-mouth disease; Tom Eagleton's medical history; the real estate holdings of Geraldine Ferraro's husband; the unbearable lightness of Dan Quayle; Sarah Palin's reading list.”

— Jeff Greenfield

“These are party-sanctioned debates. This is a presidential election, you show up at the debates. These are the rules. We have a series of unwritten rules of how campaigns are run, and everybody has followed those rules consistently over the decades. And no one has really even seriously thought about breaking them.”

— Ryan Grim

“I am sent on assignments just like guys. I have covered presidential campaigns, natural disasters, tragedies, red carpets, medical stories and more.”

— Megan Alexander

“Bush had expertise in one thing: How to run a Presidential campaign. He understands campaigns and Presidential politics. He has no interest or disposition or I think probably - he's not stupid, but he's not bright, he's not a rocket scientist - he isn't interested in policy.”

— John Dean

“Almost no one under 60 remembers what fundraising was like before Watergate. Until the 1970s, campaign money was collected by "bagmen," familiar characters from the world of organized crime. As fans of Boardwalk Empire know, a bagman is a political fixer who walked around with stacks of $100 and $1,000 bills. At lower levels, he used brown paper bags. In presidential campaigns, the cash was more likely to be in briefcases. Classier that way.”

— Jonathan Alter

“The brutality of the pace. This was my third presidential campaign and it was a thousand times faster paced than my first one in 2004. The news cycle is constant and there has been an explosion in the number of news outlets covering them. As as result we're witnessing news and entertainment melding together to create what I'd describe as the "American Idolization" of campaigns and politics.”

— Kevin Madden

“The Russian Federation has a growing Muslim minority, which is causing cultural and religious clashes. This is similar to mass immigration of Mexicans to America, and certain presidential candidates are tailoring their campaigns to get Mexican votes.”

— David Duke

“A political life, I've often said, is a continuing education in human nature, including one's own. My involvement on the ground floor of two presidential campaigns and my duties as First Lady took me to every state in our union and to seventy-eight nations. In each place, I met someone or saw something that caused me to open my mind and my heart and deepen my understanding of the universal concerns that most of humanity shares.”

— Hillary Clinton