Pastoral Resources

Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people.

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Most politicians - those people who live, eat and breathe politics - like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn't do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving.

Clinton and Obama practice this politics known quaintly as the Richard Speck strategy: if you cannot take on everyone in the room at once, take them out of the room one at a time.

Howard Dean is not the first politician to distort facts in his own interests. But many activists in the party he now leads are puzzled over what he thinks he is accomplishing politically. Is it good politics to contend that Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein than even a flawed Islamic republic?

I met my wife Anne who was a sociology student, and her influence together with activities associated with the student movement of the time opened up my interests amongst other things into the theatre, art, music, politics and philosophy.

Human nature doesn't include all human beings. There are human beings who are indifferent to politics, religion, virtually anything.

All politics is local.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country's scared.

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

The presidents I served under don't have anything to do with my politics.

Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.