It strikes me that presidential campaigns can often bring out the worst as well as the best in us.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think that the presidency really brings out the best in a lot of people.
Campaigns often make standing on principle the highest of virtues - and listening to your opponents a sure sign of weakness. It's the virtual opposite of what it takes to succeed in office. Squaring the circle takes a powerful combination of skills. But presidents who can campaign and compromise are generally the most successful.
My first campaign was pretty ugly: the incumbent came after me hard with a lot of things that weren't true.
Natural Texas politicians make terrible, terrible presidential candidates. Phil Gramm, I remember the 'Phil Gramm for President' campaign. I thought that was the worst thing in the history of the world, but Rick Perry was possibly worse.
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
I think the best campaigns are campaigns of ideas and substance.
We may like to think politics is a battle of ideas and that the best idea wins out. But that's not true in most elections. Most elections are about the worst ideas losing, not the best ideas winning.
When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.
The worst is still ahead of us. But no one in Washington has the spine to tell you that.
Midterm elections for first-term presidents are notoriously difficult.
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