Joe Klein Quotes
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If he'd been negotiating Obamacare, Lincoln would have made the infamous 'Cornhusker Kickback' deal - $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska to secure a Senator's vote - in a heartbeat, even if the press howled as it did when Barack Obama agreed to it, forcing its cancellation.
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Republicans should embrace the possibility that Obamacare could pave the way toward lower health care entitlement spending overall. That won't be easy. But it's not unthinkable, either.
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This dilettante notion that the global economy is evil because big corporate leaders make too much money... they do make too much money, but the only way we've figured out how to generate wealth in this world is through the market economy.
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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.
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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.
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I'm in favour of politicians having extra-marital relationships. Oh yeah. It makes them more understanding of the flaws that the rest of us have.
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I've been described as a grizzled political veteran.
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Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible.
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I got into journalism because I came of age in the '60s. It just seemed one way for me to get things done.
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I came to political consciousness with John F. Kennedy's magnificent 1961 Inaugural Address. It seemed the start of something fresh and exciting, and it was.
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You know, larger than life is always better than smaller than life in politicians. And, you know, God save us from mediocrities.
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We journalists are never so idiotic as when we analyze things that we shouldn't be analyzing.
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We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.
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Political courage requires clarity.
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There's a basic law, Klein's second, or third, or fourth law of politics in the TV age, which is warm always beats cold, with the exception of Richard Nixon. The nicer guy usually wins.
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I invented the psychological histories and the relationship between Jack and Susan Stanton. I didn't know anything about the Clintons. I don't know more about the Clintons' marriage than you do.
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George W. Bush will surely deserve that woolliest of all peace prizes, the Nobel.