#campaigns

My family has been around campaigns for a long time. It's something you really have to be sure that you alone want to do. Because if not, if you don't want to do it, that will just blow through the surface at some point, and people can tell. And when people can tell, it's all over. ↗

— Joseph P. Kennedy III

#around #because #been #blow #campaigns

The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by 'better' such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with 'image.' But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't? It is a rare and deeply disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse. ↗

— Neil Postman

#campaigns #debate #democracy #discourse #elections

Our campaigns have not grown more humanistic because our candidates are more benevolent or their policy concerns more salient. In fact, over the last decade, public confidence in institutions-- big business, the church, media, government-- has declined dramatically. The political conversation has privileged the nasty and trivial. Yet during that period, election seasons have awakened with a new culture of volunteer activity. This cannot be credited to a politics inspiring people to hand over their time but rather to campaign, newly alert to the irreplaceable value of a human touch, seeking it out. Finally campaigns are learning to quantify the ineffable—the value of a neighbor's knock, of a stranger's call, the delicate condition of being undecided-- and isolate the moment where a behavior can be changed, or a heart won. Campaigns have started treating voters like people again. ↗

— Sasha Issenberg

#politics #business

A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#debate #ineptitude #malice #norman-g-finkelstein #smear-campaigns

Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games. ↗

— Alastair Campbell

#campaigns #games #like #meaningful #most

Sometimes, political campaigns make decent people act and talk like perfect buffoons. ↗

— Tony Snow

#campaigns #decent #decent people #like #make

The Indians began to be troublesome all around me, killing and wounding cattle, stealing horses, and threatening to attack us. I was obliged to make campaigns against them and punish them. ↗

— John Sutter

#around #attack #began #campaigns #cattle

I am pleased to see that information campaigns, such as the America's WETLAND effort, are getting the message out, and people are beginning to realize that wetlands loss in Louisiana affects us all. ↗

— John Breaux

#am #america #beginning #campaigns #effort

That's driven by any number of factors, the most prominent of which have been the combat experience of two major campaigns - one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq - and the ongoing demands of the global war on terrorism. ↗

— Stephen Cambone

#any #been #campaigns #combat #demands

I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity. ↗

— Alastair Campbell

#books #campaigns #countries #endured #experiences