Debate Preparation Quotes

I learned more in 11 months in running for president than I did in 12 years of school.

Sometimes politics is viewed as a boxing match. So, let's look at movies of last year. You know, you prepare for match like creed. Trump is like "Mad Max: Fury Road." We have never seen anything like this in politics. The kind of race he's going to run. I mean, look, he is winning the nomination. He doesn't prepare for debates. He doesn't run advertising. He gets millions of dollars spent against him, it has no effect, he's not running as sophisticated data driven campaign yet he is winning. As each and every day, you just don't know what you're going to get with this guy.

With the presidential debates right around the corner, John Kerry is going to play Mitt Romney to help the President prepare for the debates. That's kind of a stretch; a rich white guy from Massachusetts playing a rich white guy from Massachusetts.

It just never comes across as a quality you want in a president that you're sitting in a room. It's almost as if they woke up and realized, You know, we're running against a former secretary of state. Our guy used to do the Miss Universe pageant around the world. Maybe we should try to heavy this up.

I can't wait to see the debate between Ryan and Joe Biden. Biden is said to be already trying out different strategies. So far the one that Obama likes is where Biden pretends to have food poisoning and they cancel the debate.

I can't ever remember sitting around and saying, 'gosh let's hurry up and get these debates going, that'll win it for me.' Nope.

The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face al Qaeda.

Every candidate goes into every debate hoping that they can own a particular moment.

Each of the participants [in a Presidential Debate] has a major objective and a minor one, in addition, of course, to appearing presidential. The major one is to get his messages across even if the questions don’t ask for them. The minor one is to avoid seeming unresponsive. That is why you will see the debaters answer some of the questions quickly, leaving time for what the candidate wants to talk about.

John Kerry says that he wants to debate President Bush once a month until the election. This could be a risky move for Senator Kerry. If Bush doesn't show up for the debates, John Kerry may end up debating an empty chair. And that could be pretty much a toss up as to which one has the better personality.

Moderating a debate means spending more time with briefing books than with your children. It means writing and rewriting and rephrasing. It means finding a way to be alert enough to notice when your question goes unanswered and nimble enough to decide what you will do about that on the spot.

The problem with these presidential debates like this is that you can't really prepare for them, because the questions are so individual and personal or even idiosyncratic. Secretary Hillary Clinton has a lot richer and deeper experience in doing these, obviously, than Donald Trump.

I don't think [Donald] Trump was playing rope-a-dope. He probably said, "Look, I've done these. How many debates did we do in the primaries? I know what's happening."

[Donald Trump ] would make history in so many ways because he is a candidate who eschewed the traditional arts of political campaigns, including field organization, traditional advertising, debate preparation and policy knowledge.

Because if you look at the debates now, and I have answered it except for 90 seconds by and large it's been viewed as every debate I have had I have been among the best people. And in some cases people argue the best person in those debates. I have been asked questions you never could have anticipated.

Anything can go wrong in a debate, and Obama is not a perfect debater.

You know a Senate race is obviously a much smaller deal than a presidential race. What I think makes a very hard job considerably easier when you're going to debate is if you have reminded yourself - or somebody has reminded you during the course of your campaign - that consistency is enormously important. That people don't want to hear you say one thing in one part of the state and another thing in another part of the state.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public.

So I don't think that the default mode of aggressive interviewing is useful, because politicians just build a defence against it. In fact, they thrive on 'Today' because they know what's going to happen.

When you campaign and have to participate in so many debates just to the win the nomination of your party, you've had a lot of practice. You get to figure out as you go from one debate to another where you made your mistakes. By the time you get to the big debate you're pretty polished.

If anonymous [Donald] Trump campaign sources are to be believed, they're pretty concerned he's going to blow the big debate Monday night with an utter lack of preparation.

What are we doing to make sure that people don't get the debate questions ahead of time - because I can tell you this: if my boss at the time, Reince Priebus, had gotten the debate questions, and handed them off, he would have been driven out of this town on a stake, and Donald Trump would have been vilified.

See that's a goal that I think it's very good in the debate to find out who the person is.

I actually prepared Vice President Biden for his debate in the last election. I played Sarah Palin. It's a little tough debating a woman.

When Jeb Bush came on the shows and couldn't answer questions about Iraq, and when he looked like he was unsteady, it absolutely solidified the concerns that they had had all along about his skills.