Political Miscalculation Quotes

Rumsfeld and Cheney and the President made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction. And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error…

The Vietnam War was not clearly a wrong war, but it was clear that it was stupid.

Being right too early is one of the most devastating things in politics

The invasion of Iraq was, in ways that have since become hard to dispute, a terrible mistake.

[Vietnam was] the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Every candidate for the Presidency should read books that strike cautionary notes about how recent leaders miscalculated or allowed themselves to be led astray by false beliefs.

The one big strategic error - which was a political error and an economic error of grand proportions - was the prescription drug bill.

Republicans lost it some time ago. What's scary is when they lose their sense of good planning. Like dude, you know, if you're gonna lie, really... It's a big thing to fake your way into a war. Like, think it through. Do a better job at the lie, if that's what it's gonna be. Do a better job - I mean, whatever your goals were in invading Iraq, it couldn't have been this. This can't be all part of some master plan. Something went wrong.

As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.

Historically, the Republicans have been geniuses at throwing away advantages.

The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought.

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as running mate is the towering example of his poor judgment. Palin's ignorance of public affairs is monumental.

I made the miscalculation of taking Mr. Rubio at his word that he wouldn't seek re-election if he lost the presidential primary.

Too many talented and supremely calculating politicians, including Nixon and Clinton, have destroyed their careers, or come close, by acting in ways that were obviously against their own interests.

It was a mistake. On the information we had, we shouldn't have prosecuted the war. We shouldn't have changed our argument from international law to regime change in a non-transparent way. It was an error for which we as a country paid a heavy price, and for which many people paid with their lives.

Personally, I have detested Gordon Brown since the moment in 2001 when he tried to make cheap capital out of the Laura Spence affair; as his troubles have piled up, I have felt no sympathy for him at all.

What John McCain didn't realize was that Sarah Palin was his demographic. He thought he was appealing to younger women, and in fact, Sarah Palin appealed to people who were like McCain, old white guys, who thought she was sexy to skin a moose. That was a miscalculation, it didn't work. They didn't do the vetting, they didn't do the polling.

Let's face it. Nobody predicted Trump. He's a fairytale nightmare that none of us could possibly have imagined. Shame on those 63 million who - especially those Obama voters who crossed over and voted, shame on them for putting this idiot in the White House.

You can stick a fork in Barack Obama. Politically, he's done. The main way we can screw this up is if we choose the wrong Republican.

Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait .

We foolishly did not realize Saddam was stupid.

One wrong move that appears to reveal a president ensconced in a White House bubble can lose an election, such as when President George H. W. Bush was criticized for expressing interest in the capabilities of a grocery-store scanner in the early 1990s.

The conduct of President Bush's war of choice has been plagued with incompetent civilian leadership decisions that have cost many lives and rendered the war on and occupation of Iraq a strategic policy disaster for the United States.

The Republicans underestimated and underestimated and underestimated Donald Trump. And look where that got them. They kept saying, no, no, no, that's not going to happen, we don't have to worry about that.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.