Paul Begala Quotations

One of the problems we saw in the last presidential election in our party is that our nominee, while winning the election, which we ought never to forget, often lost sight of the difference between strategy and tactics.

I'm very sunny. You know, I'm always optimistic.

Never interrupt your opponent when he's destroying himself.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are the most investigated couple in American history - now the most thoroughly exonerated couple in American history.

Again, President Reagan was sort of an amiable presence out at the ranch by the last 6 months of his presidency. He had no effect on national policy at all.

Defining the terms of the debate generally dictates who's gonna' win it.

It seems to me the American people never really forgave the Democrats for being right about Vietnam.

If George W. Bush is given a second term, and retains a Republican Congress and a compliant federal judiciary, he and his allies are likely to embark on a campaign of political retribution the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.

See, I think if it just became who's sleeping with whom, then there's no reason to prefer one party over the other, 'cause the truth is we're all sinners.

I didn't spend a lot of time on national security the American people will be glad to know.

I don't like being a voyeur, looking into other people's marriages.

I think too many Democrats are too wimpy. But I think they're beginning to toughen up.

Again and again, I've seen Bush turn a blind eye as his henchmen have leveled zealous attacks against his political enemies - assaults which the president himself has sometimes directly encouraged.

So one important lesson of Vietnam is, the first casualty of an unwise and unjust war are the American troops called on to fight it. Their service should be honored.

I try hard to be a good Catholic.

I used to go in at 5:30 or 6:00 so I could run.

I'm a Catholic, but I used to love going to Vacation Bible School with my fundamentalist friends.

It must kill George Bush that John McCain is the most popular and Beloved Republican in America.

Most politicians, when they meet with a guy like me, or a guy like Carville, tell you about how they can win.

My view was that the campaign had been a sacred thing, that it had been a real compact, because I was there and I saw the connection that Clinton made with people, and the connection that they made with him.

There's the great line: the definition of a liberal is someone who's afraid to take their own side in a fight. And that's my problem with my fellow liberals.

But I think what happened was that Clinton knew how to fight back. And the way he fought back was on the issues - being tough in staying on the things that mattered to people in their lives.

I mean, for all of his faults and the troubles in his marriage, Bill Clinton is still married to a girl he met in the library 25 years ago at school. Can we say that about many of our other leaders today in America, including on the right wing?

When your mission is to "restore honor and integrity to the White House, you've got to be willing to use any means necessary

no one will wake up Nov. 8 and not know what they were getting.

I don't think it's a lack of ideas; it's coherence.

I was looking in The New York Times the other day and there was a poll that showed that 31 percent of the people believed that the Democrats had a plan for the country. That's not enough,

When you shoot your buddy in the face, you're going to get a bad story.

We won't put the nuclear storage facility in your state unless the science gets better, improves it.

When a White House is under siege, no one wants to talk to anyone. Literally, anything you say can and will be used against you. When you're in a meeting and you see one of your colleagues taking notes, you start to wonder how long it will be before you're interrogated based on her notes. Maybe she's doodling. Or maybe she's digging your grave. The mind tries to focus on the task at hand, but the grand jury is never far from your thoughts.

The president's bottom line again, election year or not, is youth smoking, saving kids lives.

Tonight, we sheathe our swords and join hands and work together to solve our nation's most difficult problems,

We knew he was in the oil business; we didn't know it was snake oil.

When all you had to do was punch a hole in the ground and strike oil, it was easy to have the highest high school dropout rate. But you can't drop out and invent a new microchip. Texas is changing, but the constant is hatred of government, and that's a mistake in the 21st century.

There's nothing the Democrats would like more. He's terribly bright, but he's more far right than he is bright. He's become the embodiment of what most Americans hate about right wingers.

It was a huge fireball, a huge, orange fireball.

Texas is the nearest thing to heaven there is. We love our state but we are embarrassed by our weak government. We ignore 400,000 souls in Third World conditions with no electricity and no running water. We pay our teachers less than our football coaches, and we get the results you'd expect.

stood for the right of states to reject federal civil rights legislation. After Thurmond spoke, Lott told the group, 'You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.

Back in the 70s I knew people who could recall when Sugar Land was a company town - the company being the Imperial Sugar Company.

You never have a good night's sleep. You never have a peaceful meal. There's this gnawing in your gut. You get peace when you work.

They had a candidate who dodged the draft, dodged the ... National Guard. And they made that candidate look strong against a guy who was shot three times and won the Bronze Star and the Silver Star for valor. That is incredible.

They're burning the midnight oil to go through every detail. I don't think any of those details can jeopardize this. It's a good agreement for the country.

I've known Betty Currie for a long time,

It's very good for him, ... I wouldn't go so far as to say it locks anything up, though, because people want to make up their own minds.

the co-president of the United States, and Americans cannot deny his influence.

I'm no great fan of how Judge Starr conducted his investigation, but I didn't think that was the time or the place to lodge those complaints.

If you vote against him in a swing state, you look unreasonable.

Always attack, Never defend.

Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.

It taught me that Clinton's instinct to make this about your life as a citizen, rather than his as a human being, was the right answer to these things.

Bush began helping Enron in the eighties.

I was the guy that told Bill Clinton he was going to win. I had gotten the final polling numbers. He had a comfortable lead. He was not going to lose.

[Tea Party goers are] just a bunch of wimpy, whiny, weasels who don't love their country.

The difference between Martin Sheen and George W. Bush is Martin Sheen is actually convincing when he acts like he's president.

Culture has always been more important than politics. Sometimes culture is a mirror that reflects what is; sometimes it's a search-light pointing the way to what will be.

You can drive yourself crazy trying to peer into a person's soul--or you can do the sensible thing: ask not what inner motives drive a politician's policy choices but instead whether those choices are good for the country.

If we are negative by nature, we Americans are more human than most. The Founding Fathers loved going negative. Heck, the Declaration of Independence is one long negative ad.

Ah yes! Conservatives. Some of the finest minds of the 12th Century.

North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms has signed a deal with Random House to write his memoirs. Scholars will no doubt benefit from the reflections of a man who was wrong on every major issue for 40 years. Helms' aides say the proceeds from the book will be donated to the non-profit Jesse Helms Center where they apparently have more experience burning than publishing them.

Republicans want to punish work and reward wealth; hence the high payroll tax and the low dividend tax. Said one Bush economic adviser, if we can't help wealthy investors and screw working people, what's the point in being a Republican?

If my wife hears one more report that I'm joining Hillary's campaign I'm going to have to go in the Pundit Protection Program.

It is a painful reminder that even the most well-intentioned among us sometimes act in ways that put children in danger of being abused or neglected.

The media didn’t hand it to Obama; after all, the Number One cable news channel, Fox, is right-wing. The Number One newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, also has a right-wing editorial slant (and is owned by the same guy who owns Fox News). The Number One talk radio show is Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity is Number Two, and Glenn Beck is Number Three. When you control all the largest media outlets, it’s time to stop grousing about liberal media bias.

I think his deepest quality is empathy.

In our system, grand juries take every charge, every lie, and they try to sort the truth from the lies, and then they move forward into the system. And that's how the system ought to work. We should respect the secrecy of the grand jury so they can sort through what's true and what's not. And someone is leaking, and if they are leaking from the grand jury investigation, then that's a violation of the law.

If it was about lying under oath - we actually know that Clinton certainly was deceptive, as most people would be about their sex lives - but, in fact, he did not lie.

This gets back to the fundamental lesson of political survival that Bill Clinton taught me, which is if you make it about the American people's lives instead of your life, you're going to be okay.

Rick Perry is the perfect candidate for those who thought George W. Bush was just too dang cerebral. And Adios, Mofo is the perfect guide to his record, his rhetoric and his remarkable hair. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll vote.

Well, I have a message for the nameless , gutless whimperers out there. Quit whining. Unlike some other shows, we here at CROSSFIRE actually present both sides of the issue. ... Look, if you want namby-pamby one-sided arguments go to Fox.

When your mission is to restore honor and integrity to the White House, you've got to be willing to use any means necessary.

Politics is show business for ugly people.

These guys couldn't organize a one-car parade. Because they can't defend their own record of failure, they've turned their guns on Hillary.