James Baker Quotes

It's not a smear, if you please, if you point out the record of your opponent.

Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.

I have never run a negative political ad in my life.

The minute you announce as a candidate, your opponents go on a deep sea fishing expedition for your sins.

The trouble [with modern political campaigns] is that the technicians of the media and the professional campaign advisors believe that the negative commercials and the attack work better.

Anybody who says negative commercials are wrong and shouldn't be used doesn't know anything about politics. The fact is people respond to those commercials.

The Republicans are much better at negative ads than we are. But we have the 24 hour rule. If they hit you, you get your response on the media within 24 hours.

Mudslinging – In politics, anything bad the opponent says about our candidate; in contrast, when our candidate does this, it is called 'making a good point.

In a national campaign you are driven to negativism.

If you asked me, ‘Where’s the scientific evidence of what’s adding value to a campaign?,’ I’d say field organizing. But the campaign consultants who are most famous are the strategists, especially the ones who focus on TV. And that’s where the evidence of the effectiveness of anything that people do in campaigns is the most limited.

Campaigns are about adjustments.

Unfortunately, every American citizen takes the same position... that we don’t like negative advertisements. But they work! And, as you see, many a candidate has prevailed by tearing down the reputation of an opponent in a more advantageous position.

Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

Now, the Clinton campaign, you must understand something about the Clintons, and it's true of [Barack] Obama, and it's true of most Democrats. They are always in campaign mode. Even after they win elections, they stay in campaign mode in terms of how they reach people.

Karen Handel has run a 100 percent negative campaign.

Here's what I know about political campaigns: no matter what you map out at the beginning, it's always different at the end.

I ran two campaigns for governor in a state that's 2-1 Democrat where I did not mention my opponent in print, radio, or television. I don't know if any other politician at a gubernatorial, congressional, or a senatorial level can make the claim.

There's a reason people run negative ads... it's because they work.

Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office.

Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole - I was an advance man.

Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse, which reached a low during the dispiriting presidential campaign of 1988. Then, more than ever before, negative argument displaced reasoned discussion about how a nation might best be governed. The sound bite reigned. Attack commercials flourished. The signs this year aren't any better. Evidence that negative campaigning can come back to sink the sender has had little impact. The races for governor in California and Texas have already seen the same slash and burn. No doubt the proceedings will grow more rabid still as November nears. Negative discourse serves democracy poorly. The temptation to avoid serious debate is already great. It increases as the stakes soar and slander becomes a rewarding, easy option. The issues of the day go untended. The whole affair takes on the character of the gladiator's art. The GOPAC glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence—the Republican whip in the House—and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document. The nakedness of the GOPAC offering also makes it useful. There must be limits to the negative politics that voters will bear; the bald appeal to invective will certainly probe those limits. For now, it should be said that some adjectives in the glossary aptly describe the glossary itself: shallow, sensationalist, and, yes, shame(ful).

The people who run campaigns today have more iron control over the campaign than they did 20 or 30 years ago.

Candidates who went into an election with negatives higher than 30 or 40 points just inevitably lost.... Drive up the opposition's negatives.

Sure those quotations were irrelevant, but we had one objective: to keep him [Sinclair] from becoming Governor. But because he was a good man, we were sorry we had to do it that way.