Axelrod Quotes & Sayings

Anytime James Carville, Paul Begala and David Axelrod hold hands and jump for joy, it's worth pondering how to turn their joy into tears. — Ari Fleischer

But obviously, we're looking for all good ideas to help deal with our long-term debt problem. This is something that is going to affect our economy. It affects our kids. And we need to deal with it. — David Axelrod

Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency. — John Derbyshire

A tell-all book by David Axelrod, one of President Obama's former strategists, reveals that Obama chose Joe Biden as his VP because of his energy and enthusiasm. You know, the qualities you look for in someone whose main job is traveling to state funerals. — Jimmy Fallon

Two years before the last election you nor anyone else would have predicted that Barack Obama was going to get elected president of the United States. — David Axelrod

Any gentleman with the slightest chic will give a girl a fifty dollar bill for the powder room. — George Axelrod

campaign in poetry and govern in prose" - and — David Axelrod

We know that 10 million more people will lose insurance in the next 10 years if we don't act. — David Axelrod

I see my job simply as helping disseminate the message of Barack Obama, working with the communications team to make sure that we're true to the ideals and the values and the programs that he wants to advance in this country. And that's the extent of my involvement. — David Axelrod

But you say, does it represent change? The change is that we are fighting an insurance industry that has killed health reform for generations. They're spending tens of millions of dollars right now to defeat this bill, and we're on the doorstep of winning a great victory for the American people. — David Axelrod

In your defence, it's been a long day and you've had a lot to drink. — George Axelrod

I have never believed in the Wizard of Oz theory of consulting, that I am all-knowing and all-seeing, and that everyone around me is kind of a backbencher. — David Axelrod

And this was something I would always wonder about - how the lines were drawn to define mental illness. When did a little depression become pathological? When did anxiety turn into something bigger, something greater and more cautionary about your own stability? — Kate Axelrod

We agree with Simpson and Bowles and others who have looked at this. What's necessary is to stabilize the debt and then work from there. You can't balance the budget in the short term because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy. — David Axelrod

Chanukah; It's a miracle anyone can spell it! — Cantor Matt Axelrod

I'm a kibitzer with a broad portfolio. — David Axelrod

I came to the conclusion months ago, and I said it to members of Congress, that the only way people are going to fully appreciate what this reform is if we pass it and implement it and it becomes not a caricature but a reality, and I still believe that. So I think it will be easier to sell it moving forward than it was to this point. — David Axelrod

I don't see how My Fair Lady and Frankenstein are the same. Oh, wait a minute. Yes I do. — George Axelrod

With [Columbus'] sailors ready to revolt, land--as if cued by a hack playwright--suddenly materialized at the horizon on October 12, 1492. — Alan Axelrod

You know, we - if, for example, Jerry Brown can withstand, you know, what will probably end up being $200 million of spending by his opponent and get elected governor of California, that will be a big victory in the nation's largest state. — David Axelrod

The place where we don't agree is on whether there should be some restraint on insurance companies and whether they should be allowed to run wild. We believe there should be some restraint; some on the other side don't think so. — David Axelrod

We are a unified party. — David Axelrod

Some books are like chewing gum. They have just enough flavour to sate you for an hour or so. Others are like gourmet meals. Meticulously crafted with complex flavours that - while exciting during consumption - leave only a vague memory behind. The best books are like old recipes, passed down through generations. They stick with you long after the last bite. You want to return to them again and again, because they become a part of who you are. I want to write those. — Xio Axelrod

All we can do is everything we can do. (David Axelrod) — Dan Harris

When you wake up the next morning and see a bag filled with stale pieces of bread, a candle, a wooden spoon, and a feather, you may be wondering what you did last night and weather anyone got hurt [Note: This is some strange Jewish custom]. — Cantor Matt Axelrod

The truth is that as we move forward, if one side says we can't raise any taxes on anybody or any interest, and the other side says we can't cut anything, we're obviously not going to make progress on this. And our interest is in making progress on this. — David Axelrod

Congress is going to meet with you or without you, I tell them. Don't turn away in disgust and leave those decisions to someone else. You don't like politics today? Grab the wheel of history and steer us to a better place. Run for office. Be a strategist or policy aide. Work for a government agency or a nonprofit. Become a thoughtful, probing journalist. Get in the arena. Help shape the world in which you're going to live. At a minimum, be the engaged citizen a healthy democracy demands. — David Axelrod

Far be it from me to denigrate Senator McCain's advice on vice presidential nominees. — David Axelrod

Self-Test. Click here to download a PDF of this Self-Test. — David J. Axelrod

Richard: You really like it, don't you.
Gabrielle: What?
Richard: Life.
Gabrielle: Oh! Every morning when I wake up and I see there's a whole new other day, I just go absolutely ape! — George Axelrod

I think President Obama is a committed, practicing nonideologue. He's consumed by neither tactics nor ideology. He is more concerned about outcomes than he is about process and categorizations. — David Axelrod

Time magazine's Jay Carney and Richard Stengel are now in government while Obama aides David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs are commentators on MSNBC. — Glenn Greenwald

David Axelrod says we need to inspire more young people to be journalists? How about inspiring journalists to be journalists? — Ann Coulter

If your party serves the powerful and well-funded interests, and there's no limit to what you can spend, you have a permanent, structural advantage. We're averaging fifty-dollar checks in our campaign, and trying to ward off these seven- or eight-figure checks on the other side. That disparity is pretty striking, and so are the implications. In many ways, we're back in the Gilded Age. We have robber barons buying the government. — David Axelrod

I think that the millions and millions of young Americans, young Americans, who have health care today, who wouldn't have had it if the president hadn't acted are better off. — David Axelrod

This marketplace where people can buy insurance who don't have it today - a competitive marketplace: That's an idea that both sides embrace. — David Axelrod

Based upon the tournament results and the formal propositions, four simple suggestions are offered for individual choice: do not be envious of the other player's success; do not be the first to defect; reciprocate both cooperation and defection; and do not be too clever. — Robert Axelrod

But we are not going to stand by and go back to allowing people with preexisting conditions to be discriminated against, go back to the situation where people can be thrown off their insurance simply because they become seriously ill or you can't get on your parents' insurance after the age of 20. — David Axelrod

I don't mind dying, the trouble is you feel so bloody stiff the next day. — George Axelrod

We can't have - we can't have a patchwork of 50 states developing their own immigration policy. I understand the frustration of people in Arizona. They want the federal government to step up and deal with this problem once and for all, and that's what we want to do. — David Axelrod

The late fall afternoon had filled the house with a heaviness of waiting. — Howard Axelrod

Gabrielle: When I was a little girl, on Sunday mornings, if I'd been good, I was allowed to feed the giraffes.
Richard: Giraffes! Don't tell me that you had giraffes too?
Gabrielle: You mean you...
Richard: But of course we did
Gabrielle: Oh what fun. Both of us having had giraffes as children. — George Axelrod

We have to deal with the world as we find it. The world of what it takes to get this done. — David Axelrod

We've got ballots flying around, being counted by hand, arriving by truck and in God knows whose custody. — David Axelrod

I think the millions of people who had been able to renegotiate their mortgages so they are paying lower interest rates are better off. — David Axelrod

A New Campus: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ann Bowers. Steve Jobs, appearance before the Cupertino City Council, June 7, 2011. CHAPTER 41: ROUND THREE Family Ties: Interviews with Laurene Powell, Erin Jobs, Steve Jobs, Kathryn Smith, Jennifer Egan. Email from Steve Jobs, June 8, 2010, 4:55 p.m.; Tina Redse to Steve Jobs, July 20, 2010, and Feb. 6, 2011. President Obama: Interviews with David Axelrod, Steve Jobs, John Doerr, Laurene Powell, Valerie Jarrett, Eric Schmidt, Austan Goolsbee. Third Medical Leave, 2011: Interviews with Kathryn Smith, Steve Jobs, Larry Brilliant. Visitors: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mike Slade. CHAPTER 42: LEGACY Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It (Yale, 2008), 2; Cory Doctorow, Why I Won't Buy an iPad, — Walter Isaacson

People understand we're on the doorstep of doing something really historic that will help the American people and strengthen our country for the long run. — David Axelrod

We don't want to go back to the same policies and the same practices that drove our economy into a ditch, that punished the middle class, and that led us to this catastrophe. We have to keep moving forward. — David Axelrod

So, on the day after we lost Ted Kennedy's seat, when everyone in town was reading last rites over our health care bill, Obama began plotting the miracle of its resurrection. — David Axelrod

We must build bridges to the future, not the past. — David Axelrod

This ought to be a season for cooperation in terms of pushing our economy forward, job creation, steadying the middle class, and laying the groundwork for a better future. And that's what we want to work on with Republicans and Democrats. — David Axelrod

I think those autoworkers whose industry would have collapsed if the president hadn't intervened are certainly better off. — David Axelrod

I haven't given up on working ... across the aisle on issues and maybe it'll take an election or two for that to fully ferment, maybe it you know sometimes it takes awhile for people to realize what the best path is. — David Axelrod

If you look at the themes that he struck from the minute he started running for president through today, there is a very high level of consistency, and there is a sense that he is who he is. Obama's governing is completely consistent with the way he campaigned and the themes on which he campaigned, the issues he highlighted, the vision he shared. — David Axelrod

I think the average American recognizes that it took years to create the crisis that erupted in 2008 and peaked in January of 2009. And it's going to take some time to work through it. — David Axelrod

Any time you have loose ballots, you have to worry about shenanigans. It's a shame such a hard-fought election has to come down to something like this. — David Axelrod

Listen, I have a great affection and respect for Joe Biden. I think he's been a great vice president. He's taken on a lot of tough assignments for our administration. — David Axelrod

No one wants to go back to a situation where, if you have a pre-existing medical condition, you, you can be deprived of coverage. No one wants to go back to a situation where, if you get seriously ill, you can get thrown off your insurance. Seniors don't want to go back to paying more for their prescription drugs. — David Axelrod

It is a fact of modern political life that when such disasters strike, even those Americans who say they believe in smaller government, or no government at all, quickly break glass and call the government, demanding relief. — David Axelrod

I'm running against a woman who's got David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel running her campaign. — Joe Walsh

Our party is - we don't have the problems that the other party has. We're not divided. We don't have to worry about, you know, what people are saying on the side or about their affection for the president or - we don't have those problems and we don't have the reinvention convention. — David Axelrod

I think that more and more you're going to see people of good will on their side of the aisle say you know what, we got to get off the bus here, this is not headed in the right direction. — David Axelrod