Notable Quotables - 10/26/1992

Clinton's We Decade?


"From Bush it is more of the same, a laissez-faire embrace of the free markets, a scarcely subtle survival-of-the-fittest signal. The Republicans, it is clear, see nothing wrong with extending the Me decade indefinitely; no matter that Reagan's trickle-down nostrums, which were supposed to lift all boats, lifted only yachts....But the core of Clinton's economic vision is distinguishable from the President's and is perhaps best described as a call for a We decade; not the old I-am-my- brother's-keeper brand of traditional Democratic liberalism, but an acknowledgment that the interconnectedness of global economics requires that many prosper, or no one will."
- Time Special Correspondent Michael Kramer, October 19.

 

Scintillating Stockdale


"Look out for Stockdale. I think he's going to be very engaging."
- NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, October 12 Today.

"The low point [of the first debate] was Bush claiming the stock market drop was caused by Clinton doing well in the polls, where it really was because of the economy and bad economic news....I think it's going to be especially difficult for Quayle, because he's got two really smart people he's debating against....He's got another unknown in Stockdale, who's really going to be hard for him to hold a candle to intellectually."
- Newsweek reporter (and former Dukakis campaign worker) Clara Bingham on the Fox Morning News, October 12.

 

Gore Groupies and Quayle Cutters


"Dan Quayle did far better in last night's vice-presidential debate than he did in the famous 1988 clash. In fact, he performed much better than the President did in Sunday night's debate. The problem for Quayle was that Al Gore was better still."
- Boston Globe reporter Scot Lehigh, October 14 "news analysis."

"I think Al Gore wins by default, because he didn't set the tone. I think Dan Quayle came across like a Ken doll on steroids...No matter how flimsy your facts are, deliver them with great force and fire."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, October 19.

"I think a lot of people were wondering if Dan Quayle would fumble the ball. He didn't, but at times he sounded almost shrill and nasty. I think in the battle of who looked coolest under pressure, Gore won that."
- CBS News reporter Bill Lagattuta after the October 13 debate.

"[Gore] obviously knows what he is talking about most of the time. He's very competent, he thinks clearly, and so forth. On the other hand, if your fear of the federal government is so enormous, and you don't want government to play an active role, and you think the market can take care of it, or local government can take care of it, then Dan Quayle's, I don't know if I'd call it passion, or temper is more like it, I suppose, would serve you well as kind of an anti-government, anti-competency impulse."
- Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Scheer on CNN's post-debate analysis, October 13.

"Quayle was passionate, well-informed? No, I think at times he appeared to be raging almost out of control."
- Detroit Free Press Deputy City Editor Ron Dzwonkowski, also on CNN.

"Al Gore won it for taking the high road with his cool command of the facts, and Jim Stockdale gets the runner-up trophy for the best one-liners. Dan Quayle lost for the hate-mongering that turned off much of the nation at his party's convention in Houston. It wasn't that he made any gaffes. He looked poised and spoke with great energy. But he played dirty while the other two candidates played clean."
- Boston Globe columnist and former Washington bureau reporter Susan Trausch, October 14.

 

More on Nasty Bush


"What are your expectations? How nasty do you expect George Bush to try to be?"
- Bryant Gumbel to John Chancellor on NBC's Today, October 9.

"Fred, you've said time and again that character is an important issue in the campaign. Clearly, that red-baiting junk didn't work for the President last night. What's he going to try next?"
- CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith, October 12.

 

AIDS in the Eighties


"Throughout the '80s, we heard it over and over - the government doesn't give a damn about people with AIDS. They'd just as soon let them die as lift a finger to help them. Well, that's changing."
- CBS reporter Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes, October 4.

 

Fond Memories of Columbus


"[Columbus] sailed just as Jews and Muslims were being expelled from Spain, the persecution of those peoples and the riches robbed from them paying for his small armada of ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, to set sail for new plunder. For Native Americans, the people who hardly felt discovered, Columbus' landing commenced a Holocaust. There's really no other word for the death delivered by settlers, as they scattered, enslaved, and obliterated Indian nations on their own sacred lands."
- NBC weekend Today co-host Scott Simon, October 11.

"The old man who saw them first must have been more astonished than afraid. There were so few of them. What harm could they do? Well, we know now what harm they could do. So much that some people today say they wish Columbus had never come."
- CBS Sunday Morning host Charles Kuralt, same day.

 

Loading Up for Limbaugh


"Limbaugh's ultimate message is that America will be a just, safe, and harmonious nation if only everybody will stop saying otherwise. He offers his many followers not a blueprint for the way things ought to be, but a cruel illusion for those who want to believe they can go back to the way things were."
- Former CBS Morning News Executive Producer Jon Katz on Rush Limbaugh's new book The Way Things Ought to Be, October 11 Washington Post Book World.

 

Dirty Little Secrets


"It is the national press corps' dirty little secret that many reporters are out-of-synch with much of America, talking to pollsters and spokesmen more than people, sympathetic to Democratic causes and issues, clinging to the ridiculous and transparently false premise that they are objective and without agendas of their own."
- Katz, same review.

 

Denial


"I don't think there is [a bias] at all. I think anyone who accuses the press of bias is acting in desperation, I think. I think the press has been much more aggressive and fair, in being, in going after both sides, and looking, than ever before."
- New York Times reporter Richard Berke on CNN's Larry King Live, October 16.

 

Insight of the Night


"One does not have to believe that this was as boring as watching Grandmother crochet to recognize that this was not the last half of the ninth inning of the Braves versus the Pirates in the seventh game."
- Dan Rather in post-presidential debate special, October 15.

 

- L. Brent Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Brant Clifton, Nicholas Damask, Steve Kaminski, Marian Kelley, Tim Lamer; Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Circulation Manager