DAVID FRUM

I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words.

Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington.

I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.

Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox.

Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.

Republicans have to move to a point of greater unity.

As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer.

A presidential speech is always the work of many hands.

My view on candidates on money is unless it's proven that the donor stole the money, the campaign keeps the money.

Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon.

To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.

There is no right to work in a think tank, and these are very privileged positions.

The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens.

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?

My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.

America under 30 is a more non-whites place than America over 60. And we know that non-whites and whites vote differently.

Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained.

What I say is I am somebody who cares about conservative ideas. I want to see them implemented in governance.

Think tanks do have points of view, and they are absolutely entitled to defend them.

If you go on TV and say there's no other country in the world where you can be born poor and become rich, you get a huge megaphone. If you tell the truth, which is that most of the studies show actually the United States is worse than anybody except Britain in upward mobility, there is no audience for you.

We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies.

Nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents.