Perhaps the cruelest thing ever said of Hubert Humphrey was that he had the soul of a vice president.
Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach.
Most people who make threats don't follow through. The most dangerous people are often those who never make threats. But 'most' and 'often' aren't what you are looking for when you're dealing with a scary person. You want to 'know.' And there is no knowing.
Gore will not win a popularity contest, he will not win a personality contest, but he can win an idealogical battle, and he can win a battle of experience.
The personal is political, but only to a point.
Every time I hear someone making ignorant comments about the supposed 'evils' of homosexuality, I think about the true evil of the high suicide rates among gay and lesbian teens.
Most people don't know who Ken Mehlman is. He's the chairman of the Republican Party, obviously, but what he's doing that Howard Dean isn't doing is spending a lot of time on the nuts and bolts of putting the party together.
Senseless violence is, almost by definition, hard to understand. Not that I can understand terrorists who kill from hate, but at least we can identify a reason - a terrifying one, to be sure, grounded in a violent belief system - for what they do. Two gangs go to war. Extremists kill in the name of belief.
When a father climbs a dangerous mountain and dies, we mourn. When a mother does, we question her judgment. How could she?
Being liked by the boys and girls on the bus doesn't necessarily earn you the respect of the people back home. Standing up to them, giving as good as you get, all that helps.
Politics isn't just about doing the right thing. It's also about winning.
When you're standing in front of an audience like this that is so enthusiastic and so much behind you, it is very hard to give a bad speech. Even a bad speech sounds good in a convention hall like this.
I always tell my students: I don't care which side you're on. I respect you too much to try to persuade you in 120 minutes a week, much less lure you into pretending that you agree with me. All I want is for you to own this democracy, to see yours, to have a stake in it.
When I ask the young people from California why they want to go to New York, and the ones from the East why they're determined to go West, I hear what you'd expect: new challenges, different weather, boyfriends, girlfriends, to make a name... They laugh when I say, 'But your poor mother.'
Al Gore didn't need to distance himself from Bill Clinton when he ran for president in 2000 because, when he ran, the country was in very good shape: strong economically and not at war. He did it anyway, and it was, in many people's estimate, mine included, one of the reasons he lost.
I grew up when people were afraid to 'come out' as gay. If you asked me how many gay kids I grew up with or went to school with, I would have said none - which of course could not have been true. The truth is I have no idea how many confused and frightened kids I grew up with. They are still out there.
The idea that somehow you're going to tax the 'rich' enough to pay for quality health care for every American who doesn't have it, can't afford it or stands to lose it, not to mention for all of the undocumented aliens who receive it for free now and presumably will continue to in Obama health land, is almost laughable.
I've been doing these conventions for 20 years, and we used to at least have debates about issues. Nothing is happening basically at this convention, other than speeches.
I can't begin to count how many times I have warned politicians and candidates to worry as much about the good coverage as the bad, because the more air they put in your balloon, the bigger the target when they start shooting.
A lot of Republicans are white Christians, but the Republican Party is reaching out to Hispanics, and reaching out to blacks, and reaching out to Asians.
