Rick Perlstein Quotes

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.

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

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

Stories are "how we organize the chaos of experience into the order we require just a carry-on." Joan Gideon

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

What does sincerity mean if it is chosen as deliberate strategy?

Teddy White lamented that TV might spell the death of serious politics: to give a thoughtful response to serious questions, politician needed a good thirty seconds to ponder, but television allowed only five seconds of silence at best. DDB (ad men) found nothing to lament and the fact. They were convinced you could learn everything you needed to KNOW about a product, which in this case happens to be a human being, in half a minute – the speed not of thought but of emotion.

For the first time on Planet Earth (in 1964 America), a nation was made up of more college students than farmers. An unheard-of 42% of high school graduates sought higher education.

Chronicling the mid-1970s up session with Gerald Ford's clumsiness, the author quotes a medieval maxim that the king has two bodies. The head of state has a physical body like everyone else, but he also represents the body politic, either reflecting its majesty or its weakness.

Presidents are also always storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies.

A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman.

Rebelling against the status quo was one of the definitions of conservatism.

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

In politics, if you're explaining, you're loosing.