Quotes by Rick Perlstein

A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.

Richard Nixons conversation was loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries hed called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides.

One of the ladies asked about that awful Bobby Kennedy, and Goldwater responded by speaking about the attorney general with touching affection. (Mary) McGrory recalled how Jack Kennedy behaved at a similar stage in his campaign: spouting statistics, attacking carefully chosen enemies and puffing all the right friends, quoting dead Greeks, never cracking a joke lest he remind the voters how young he was.

To claim the mantle of purity is always a risky business. It just gives an excuse to be disillusioned once your ordinary humidity is exposed.

Goldwater hardly ever mentioned a statistic. He hardly ever used it EXAMPLE. He presumed you already knew what he meant. Reagan SHOWED you.

In politics, if youre explaining, youre loosing.

Do what you are doing. Monastic motto

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

Goldwaters approach to any political problem invariably derived from the evidence of his own eyes.

Ronald Reagan was just as angry. But he made you want to stand right alongside him and shake your fist at the same things he was shaking his fist at.

Chits knew no ideology.

Television was suppressing their freedom not to know.

Fifties advertising was a dogmatic art, to the point of pretending to be a science.

He fetishized limits.

The task of defending capitalism was still important to leave to the capitalists.

One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew

The head of Goldwaters California operation what was so uncomfortable around people that he worked up a routine to deal with employees with whom he was forced to share an elevator: Taken your vacation yet? he would ask when they entered; answer took just long enough to deliver him to his fourth-floor office.

Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it.

Theres no question that Kennedy was an utter failure as a passer of laws during his proverbial thousand days.

Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory.