3 Quotes by Barton Swaim

This isn't to say politics is full of lies and liars; it has no more liars than other fields do. Actually one heads very few proper lies in politics. Using vague, slippery, of just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing.

Successful politicians are people who know how to make us think well of them without our realizing that that’s what they’re doing; they know how to make us admire and trust them.

One of the melancholy facts of political life is that your convictions tend to align with your paycheck.