24 Quotes by Hugh Sidey

We love the blather and boast, the charge and counter-charge of campaigning. Governing is a tougher deal.

A sense of humor is needed armor.

Bureaucrats are the only people in the world who can say absolutely nothing and mean it.

In this era of world leadership, the metal detector is the altar and the minicam may be god.

When people travel here from across the country, they shed jealousies and politics and prejudices. The mighty climb down. The humble are elevated.

Reagan "has conducted an arms race on earth," boomed Mondale. A race generally implies two parties. The Soviets contributed a little bit to this problem, if Mondale had not noticed.

We are creating a political demolition derby, not a presidential debate. Those strange impulses in the American soul that have produced mud wrestling and The Gong Show seem to have claimed the national campaign.

China's Premier Zhao Ziyang, for all of his billion constituents, seemed in the evening's lovely flow like a favorite uncle, smiling a little too much, wanting to be a bit American, talking about peace and pork chops.

In just 20 years terrorism, communications, the jet plane and the increase of wealth and knowledge have forced, to varying degrees, world leaders into a haunted and secret peerage whose links with the people they guide are meticulously cleansed and staged.