Hanan Ashrawi Quotes

Hyperbole has been part of elections since the days of John Adams, and there's nobody better than Joe Biden to give us a little hyperbole, as we all know.

From my experience with 5 presidential elections, candidates sometimes say things when campaigning that they don't necessacerily do when they are governing.

When people campaign for positions, they promise people all kinds of things.

Nowadays, politically, everybody is promising everything. That's the only way you can get elected.

The First Law of Politics: Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

I hate to rain on anyone's parade or burst the enthusiasm bubble, but talk is especially cheap during an election season.

Shockingly enough, what people say during campaigns is meant to increase the odds they get elected.

Political pandering comes in all shapes and sizes, but every four years the presidential primary bring us in contact with its purest form - praising ethanol subsidies amid the corn fields of Iowa.

In the heat of our campaigns, we have all become accustomed to a little anger and exaggeration. Yet, on the whole, our political process has served us well.

One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas.

The public is looking for free lunches, and the political competition for votes makes the politicians offer them free lunches.

People can expect to see a lot of me - I'm not too proud to stand on corners and hold my campaign signs.

All Coolidge had to do in 1924 was to keep his mean trap shut, to be elected. All Harding had to do in 1920 was repeat “Avoid foreign entanglements.” All Hoover had to do in 1928 was to endorse Coolidge. All Roosevelt had to do in 1932 was to point to Hoover.

I have serious doubts about the value of debates in a presidential election. They tend to be a test of reaction time rather than a genuine exposition of the participants' philosophies and programs

We elect people who are good at getting elected rather than good at representing.

No amount of promises to the needy at election time will make the wrong policies rights; nor would lessen the enormous price we have to pay for them.

We’re going to sell Jack like soap flakes. There are no accidents in politics.

Billboards paid for by the government, which feature the exploits or image of any candidate should not appear within 90 days before an election

To win [elections] in this country these days you've got to campaign down to a 13-year-old's level of mental development.

Democracy in the United States takes politicians who are reasonable in private and it churns them through a public process that is almost tailor-made to undermine their virtues. Perpetually kissing up to the voters destroys the leadership qualities the voters are looking for in the first place: tranquility of spirit, independence of mind and a sensitivity to the contours and complexity of reality.

If you add up all the promises any politician makes, the math doesn't work. Hillary Clinton's math doesn't work; Donald's math probably doesn't work. I think you have to listen to their campaign pitches more as symbolic, more as metaphors.

There is always a gap between what candidates say in the heat of the campaign, when they are not constrained by the realities of governance, and how they act after being sworn into office.

In every American election, crazy things are said. Positions are taken which the winners try very hard to forget afterwards.

The good and the bad news is that politicians rarely do what they say they are going to do when they campaign.

Well, the elected officials in both parties are receiving campaign contributions and support through electioneering communications from groups that aren't technically affiliated with the campaigns, but really are. That's the off-the-books financing of electioneering communications that's going on.