Top 30 Joe Klein Quotes

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.

For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

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.

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.

Political courage requires clarity.

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.

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.

Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.

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.

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.

We journalists are never so idiotic as when we analyze things that we shouldn’t be analyzing.

If every American automatically has health coverage, the age at which Medicare kicks in becomes a less fraught issue. We could gradually raise the age of Medicare eligibility a bit, according to income, and save money.

You can’t get all of your news from Jon Stewart, especially since it’s a comedy show.

You know, larger-than-life politicians have larger-than-life strengths and larger-than-life weaknesses.

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.

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.

If there was one fact that sent me hurtling off to write ‘Politics Lost,’ it was when I learned that John Kerry had focus-grouped Abu Ghraib. We knew about the Justice Department memo in June of 2004, and Kerry didn’t raise that in any one of his three debates with George Bush.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Throughout history, civilizations have built a common cause through coming-of-age rituals. But we don’t do that anymore. Maybe we should think about that.

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.

I think that if you make a strong statement of principle, even if the folks disagree with you, people will respect you for it.

I got into journalism because I came of age in the ’60s. It just seemed one way for me to get things done.

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.

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.

For those of us who consider ourselves political moderates, life is a dispiriting slog, a sorry mix of rectitude and ineptitude.

What do you do in a novel? You take recognizable characters from your own life, and you fantasize about what they’re really like.

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.