Joe Klein Quotes
That was the miracle of Abraham Lincoln, politician. He pursued the high purpose of moving justice forward via the low arts of patronage and patronization. Indeed, in a democracy, it is usually the only way great deeds are done.
Joe Klein
Quotes to Explore
I think that if you make a strong statement of principle, even if the folks disagree with you, people will respect you for it.
Joe Klein
For those of us who consider ourselves political moderates, life is a dispiriting slog, a sorry mix of rectitude and ineptitude.
Joe Klein
For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.
Joe Klein
Previous presidents, including great ones like Roosevelt, have used the IRS against their enemies. But I don't think Barack Obama ever wanted to be on the same page as Richard Nixon.
Joe Klein
I believe that poverty is often the result of inappropriate behavior - out-of-wedlock births, dropping out of school, crime and drugs - which should not be rewarded. But often it isn't, and common decency requires that we take care of the least of these.
Joe Klein
Novel writing should never be confused with journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of Primary Colors, a fair number of journalists confused.
Joe Klein
Bush the Elder's stature as president grows with every passing year. He was the finest foreign policy president I've ever covered and a man who defied his party on tax increases while imposing budget restrictions on the Democrats.
Joe Klein
What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they're really like.
Joe Klein
Back in George W. Bush's second term, when diplomatic realism began to overtake foolish bellicosity, the president developed one of his patented nicknames for the two most powerful neoconservative journalists, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer: he called them 'the Bomber Boys.'
Joe Klein
You know, larger-than-life politicians have larger-than-life strengths and larger-than-life weaknesses.
Joe Klein
Ever since John Kennedy, Democrats have had a weakness for dashing younger men like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and, I suppose, Jimmy Carter. They balance their tickets with senior statesmen - Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden, Walter Mondale. (Al Gore was young but played ancient).
Joe Klein
When politicians began to see that every last thing that they did in public could be broadcast to a mass audience, the fact that the stakes were so much higher now that every moment became fraught caused them to become more cautious, and the consultants very gradually but inevitably became literal reactionaries.
Joe Klein
Barack Obama's inspirational whoosh to the presidency in 2008 was unusual. Most campaigns are less exhilarating; indeed, they are downright disappointing - until someone wins.
Joe Klein
You know, when George Bush talks about freedom not being America's gift to world but God's gift to all humankind, it smells like market testing to me.
Joe Klein
In point of fact, 'Simpson-Bowles' has become a symbol, or SimBowl, rather than an actual plan, political shorthand for the process of long-term deficit reduction.
Joe Klein
Diversity has been written into the DNA of American life; any institution that lacks a rainbow array has come to seem diminished, if not diseased.
Joe Klein
In 2012 there was a megafoolish, if well-funded, effort by a group called Americans Elect to raise an independent Cincinnatus to run for president via an Internet draft. It flopped, spectacularly.
Joe Klein
You know that Moses was spinning like crazy in Exodus XIV through XVII when the Jewish people wanted to go back and become a place again because tramping through the desert was a bit too hard.
Joe Klein
