John Podhoretz Quotes
Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.
Comedians and impressionists used to be two different showbiz animals entirely, but now there's no such thing as a comedian who doesn't do impressions.
There's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.
I was wholeheartedly attracted to the conservative atmosphere that permeated the city of Washington.
I look at 'The New York Review of Books.' It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.
Your race and gender don't change, but you can choose to change your political affiliation at will.
The problem is that borrowing money to pay back more borrowed money that will oblige you in the future to borrow even more money doesn't sound kosher. Because it isn't.
Back in 1995, Bill Gates himself didn't understand that the internet was the direction computing was going.
I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion.
While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompanied - and to some extent overshadowed - by elevated and inspiring ideas about the American future.
Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president.
Obama's explanation for the slowdown in economic growth is that the public sector is hurting, and that's where Washington must step in and act.
For the record, I am not an admitted homosexual, nor am I a homosexual, though I do know the lyrics to every show tune ever written, which might perhaps account for the confusion.
Memories of the last nine years have turned Ground Zero from a site of horror, to a reminder of grief, to an occasion for ludicrous artistic posturing - and now to something very close to parody.
Newt Gingrich has a restless and outsized intelligence that is tragically unleavened by any kind of critical sensibility.
For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.
Romney is a good, intelligent, extraordinarily generous man who put on a great fight. But he didn't understand the country or the people he sought to lead, and that is why he lost.
Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.
She needs to seem tough, and whatever Hillary's weaknesses, tough is a pretty good word to describe her.
The exit polls suggest that after a relatively disappointing first term, Obama managed to reassemble almost all of his 2008 electorate.
Is victory sweet because your side wins - or is it really because the other side loses?
Why, listening to Obama talk about his economic triumphs over the last three years might make you want to move to the country he was describing. Too bad that country exists primarily in his own head.
When Obama was inaugurated, he and his team had an insight - though whether the insight was conscious or not I don't know. But it was this: The TARP $700 billion price tag was a new kind of model.
Imagine his delight after it 'leaked' that he will propose raising taxes on the wealthy by $320 billion over the next 10 years, including increases to the capital gains and inheritance taxes.
By keeping most tax rates at present levels, Obama and the Democrats will claim that they have championed tax cuts for the middle class.
Unquestionably, American political rhetoric can be repugnant, and the Right can certainly be as guilty as the Left.
Many people crave security and stability rather than risk-taking, and that doesn't make them any less American. They are the workers rather than the job creators, and all societies need both.
Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.
America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.
All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.
This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.
Obama's presidency hasn't been dedicated to achieving economic growth in the short term, or about creating jobs.
Obama's coalition would have consigned him to the political margins as little as 12 years ago, but the nation's demographic changes are moving far more quickly than most Republicans anticipated.
I've worked as someone's deputy, and now it's time for me to run something. It's time for me to run my own shop.
Romney is right that the Obama vision is too centered on government. But his is too centered on the promotion of business and wealth creation at the expense of everything else.
Newt Gingrich never received more than 100,000 votes in his life. He'll never be president.
The 2004 presidential election that saw George W. Bush win with 51 percent of the vote was the last one Republicans will ever win with the overwhelmingly white and male coalition they have now.
The classic rule of thumb is that if you are an intellectual ideological magazine, you do better in opposition than you do if your views are reflected by people in power.