“You obviously haven’t lived in D.C. very long if you think two and a half minutes is too soon to talk politics.”
Source: Requiem for the Devil
“When government works, it is usually because the chief understands the fabric of power, threading the needle where policy and politics converge.”
Source: The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
“At a farewell party, his staff presented him with a gift: a beaten-up car seat—a nod to his Secret Service code name.”
Source: The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
“The way it’s going…
(166 words)
A foul-mouthed Pee-wee Herman runs for president. People finally realize what a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and homophobic bigot he is. He’s clearly not a politician. Rather, he’s someone who speaks his mind, and that makes him relatable.
Herman runs against a faceless, forgettable career backbencher who’s been wrong on every issue for half a century, has become a multimillionaire without a legal avenue to attaining his fortune, and who you’re told you have to vote for because he’s experienced.
Last year, we were told that the politician had a lobotomy, but the alternative is even worse.
The voters will be hit with a tsunami of stomach-turning, deceptive ads and told that they have to vote for one of the two, or else they’ll be throwing away their democracy.
In four years, they’ll run Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s coat for president. No one will notice. His coat will have more integrity than all of the idiots in recent years they’ve presented to us so we can confirm them.”
Source: Barbarians in the Halls of Power
“She was warned.
She was given an explanation.
Nevertheless, she persisted.”
“Otis, on the other hand, didn't miss home a bit. He had always hated the stairs in our house in Massachusetts. He was now five years old and very large for a golden retriever. I thought he was fat, but Bruce insisted he was just "big-boned". Either way, climbing the steep stairs at home was a challenge. Whenever Bruce and I went upstairs, Otis would sit near the bottom step, carefully calculating whether we would be on the second floor long enough to make it worthwhile to heave himself up the stairs. And on the way down the stairs, Otis was like a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler barreling down a steep hill. We just got out of his way.
But in the new Washington apartment building, Otis had an elevator. As far as he was concerned, life was sweet.”
“We need to live our values, to be the kind of nation that invests in opportunity, not just for some of us, but for all of us.”
Source: This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class
“Meanwhile, bank regulators looked off somewhere in the middle distance, wearing the same expression as a dog owner who’s pretending that his pooch isn’t pooping on your lawn.”
Source: This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class
“I’m here to ask you to fight for more funding for research on Alzheimer’s. Please. I’m going to forget, so I need you to remember.”
Source: This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class
“Sometimes it pays to fight back, even when everyone says it would be better to give up.”
Source: This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class