Candidate Image Quotes

The media cannot come separate [Donald] Trump from his supporters. Only Trump can do that. They're trying, they're gonna keep trying because they think they can. They did it with [George W.]Bush. They did it with [Mitt] Romney. They did it with [John] McCain. They did it with Bob Dole.

I think the age of the modern media campaign has created a new icon, the celebrity-in-chief. Political elections have become wars fought by candidates with opposing values.

Barack Obama didn't get elected president, would never have been elected president, had he decided to run as a black candidate. In order to reach the broadest number of people you have to speak to their interests as broadly as you can.

The most successful politicians are the ones who embrace their best traits while turning their liabilities into loveable attributes. And yet, many a candidate tries to run as something they aren't simply because the strategy dictates it.

Hillary [Clinton] had started running a million-dollar ad campaign trying to define [Donald] Trump as temperamentally unfit for the office and intellectually unfit. No experience. It's dangerous to let Trump anywhere near the nuclear codes and the push button and so forth.

A campaign adviser can change the outside appearance of the candidate, but the ideology and personality of the candidate remains the same.

Political debates, which are considered central to modern American political campaigns, appear useless as they put pressure on each candidate to put on some sort of act, to show in an impossibly brief time a superior, distinctive personality and command of the issues; the debates therefore are…fake

If you really want to diminish a candidate, depict him as the foil of his handler. This is as old in American politics as politics itself.

I just find this interesting that Ronald Reagan was regarded much the way Donald Trump is except Reagan was governor of California. He had run for the nomination the Republican Party in '76. But he was laughed at. They thought he was dumb then. They thought he was slow minded and dim-witted back then. They thought he couldn't speak. They thought Reagan - amazingly, a guy that later became known as the Great Communicator - couldn't speak.

Voters don't have to love him, Romney advisers say, but they will respect him.

I am not naive or stupid enough to imagine that people are just going to look at my face and vote for me.

Al Gore adopted three utterly different personas in three national presidential debates.

I really think of [Donald] Trump erratic. I think that was the big message that came out. The positive agenda for Hillary [Clinton] was a little less vibrant.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

The fact is that we do pay attention. I think that it's unfortunately the case, whether you're a man or woman and you're running for president you need to look as good as you can look.

"Perceive" is the word that became in the '72 campaign what "charisma" was for the 1960, '64 and even the '68 campaigns. "Perceive" is the new key word. When you say perceive you imply the difference between what the candidate is and the way the public or the voters see him.

Even people who vote on the issues are moved by temperament, moved by style, moved by an assessment of “what kind of person if this?”

It seems like you can't actually have really bad hair or be bald and run for President of the United States.

Republicans in the South could not win elections by talking about issues. You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, was a bad guy.

Voters like to fall in love with presidential candidates, at least a little bit.

No matter the candidate, every detail in a campaign is carefully and strategically framed for our consumption. The devil is in them.

If you really want to diminish a candidate, depict him as the foil of his handler. This is as old in American politics as politics itself. It's easy to point at me. I'm convenient.

I think, you know, we always tell candidates, show, don't tell, what you're all about. I think Hillary Clinton's speech was an important speech that people are going to look at and they're going to see not just the attacks on Donald Trump, but also her admission that maybe she'd been part of the polarization problem as well and she could do better.

I don't think voters give a hoot about the character of their political advisors, except to the extent that character reflects on the candidates.

There is something discordant about a team of speechwriters and political operatives hammering away to create an image of the 'real, inner' candidate. And, to be blunt, there is no necessary connection between a moving life experience and the skills necessary for leadership.