Obama Political Quotes

#1. Obama has figured out the best method to prepare the way for his verbal Houdini acts: Use political noise as the tune-up din before the aria. Perhaps his body temperature is so low, it sometimes takes him too long to break out the song.

Tina Brown

#2. Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins ...

T. Rafael Cimino

#3. I think the question really is, whether our political leaders have stepped out of bounds. Because all this has been approved by our political leaders, Cheney and Bush in the first instance, and now, sadly, Barack Obama in the second instance.

Ray McGovern

#4. In 2008, Barack Obama was the electoral equivalent of the Hula Hoop; a political Pet Rock; a craze, a fad, an irrational gadget. The latest have-to-have, must-vote-for candidate.

Mondo Frazier

#5. FDR created today's 30 percent coalition. Obama wants to finish the job by turning it into a permanent ruling majority. There's nothing new about the Obama Narrative. It is the FDR Narrative on steroids. It is intended to lead to greater statism and political gain.

Arthur C. Brooks

#6. The issue of guns, as president [Barack] Obama mentioned, which is particularly assailant in Colorado, a very complicated gun story, and I think a political climate that urges people to take issues into their own hands.

Jonathan Michel Metzl

#7. Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.

Thomas Sowell

#8. If Mitt Romney defeats President Obama in his bid for reelection on Tuesday, it will mark the success of one of the most deeply cynical political campaigns in American history. It is hard to beat an incumbent no matter the economic climate.

Juan Williams

#9. I was with - he wasn't the president then, but - Barack Obama, when he was running, in Washington, during Black Congressional Caucus Weekend, and did a panel about global warming with him. It was almost as if I switched careers for a while, and became a political activist.

Lawrence Bender

#10. Both the Obama and Romney campaigns said they pulled all their political ads today in observance of the September 11th anniversary. But politics wasn't very far offstage. The Obama campaign sees foreign policy as an advantage this year.

Mara Liasson

#11. Barack Obama has come closer than any figure in recent history to obeying a direct call of the people to the brutal and bloody fields of political mission.

Michael Eric Dyson

#12. I feel like Barack Obama, kind of in a political sense, embodies that same kind of spirit as a Q-Tip or a Santogold or a Common. I feel like there is a synergy going on here in this country and abroad. I feel like the doors are open, and it's time to push them wide open.

Q-Tip

#13. Hikes in the debt ceiling - without any political demands from the opposition party - had been routine until President Obama took office.

Juan Williams

#14. The American people are fed up ... with political posturing.' True, but also an example of political posturing.

James Taranto

#15. We're at the end of an era of failed leadership. We have been led by a divider [ Barack Obama] who has sliced and diced the electorate, pitting American against American for political purposes.

Rick Perry

#16. Obama has not accomplished a key mission: sell his own successes and keep his own (political) troops fired up and ready to go.

David Corn

#17. The most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I'm talking to a group and I'm saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I'm just being glib or clever.

Barack Obama

#18. For all of his early promise on a law school faculty and his seat in the Illinois Senate, Obama in 2002 had no money, no political organization and a name that rhymed with the world's most famous terrorist.

Anonymous

#19. I think the tragedy of Barack Obama's presidency is that although a lot of people around the world really admire Barack Obama a lot, they don't admire the American political and economic model as much as they used to.

Peter Beinart

#20. I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

Barack Obama

#21. The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice.

Glenn Greenwald

#22. I'm a big fan of Barack Obama. I think he carries a heavier burden and is held to a greater and higher standard than other candidates : I think there's a large, large portion of this country that feels disenfranchised and marginalized by the political process.

Chris Carter

#23. George W. Bush was a very bad president. The Iraq war was a big mistake. The U.S.A. needed a political change. I hoped Barack Obama could be a good president, but I'm disappointed. He hasn't done well.

Marc Rich

#24. It's not a lack of competence that is preventing the[Barack] Obama administration from stopping these attacks. It is political correctness. We didn't monitor the Facebook posting of the female San Bernardino terrorist. She made a public call to jihad, and they didn't target it.

Ted Cruz

#25. [David] Maraniss sees [Barack] Obama as a man with a moviegoer's or writer's sensibility, where he is both participating and observing himself participating, and views much of the political process as ridiculous or surreal, even as he is deep into it.

Jane Mayer

#26. President Obama decided to prematurely withdraw from Iraq for no other reason than politics. The artificial deadline for withdrawal was not determined for strategic goals but rather for a political one - his reelection timetable.

Michael Ramirez

#27. If people are engaged, eventually the political system responds, despite the money, despite the lobbyists, it still responds.
~ President Obama

Chris Smith

#28. The big post-election story if Obama wins the presidency will be in the hands of the ethically embattled Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He's not very popular, and has a chance to use his power to appoint an Obama replacement as a step in the direction of political rehabilitation.

Chuck Todd

#29. Anyone who speaks of punishing their political enemies in on the wrong side. It is clearly evil and we have a responsibility to say so.

Glenn Beck

#30. If we were real domestic terrorists, shoot, President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us, wouldn't he?

Sarah Palin

#31. President Obama compared himself to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in the struggle to bring about change. The comparison is flawed. They spent years in jail before taking political power, while politicians from Chicago do it the other way around.

Argus Hamilton

#32. I made the mistake of writing something very, very short about Obama for this website that I write fiction for, and my father told me never do that again. And he was right. I have nothing to add to a political conversation because it's not my area.

Jesse Eisenberg

#33. Vice President Biden's surprising declaration of unqualified support for gay marriage seems to have forced President Obama into a public endorsement of a controversial social issue. It is difficult not to suspect that Biden's pronouncement aimed to give the president some political cover.

Robert Dallek

#34. The fact that Obama is getting criticism from the left and the right might reflect his understanding of the underlying political dynamics.

Ron Fournier

#35. Barack Obama's political roots are liberal, but he has always resisted buying into the brand of liberalism that denigrates American greatness and potential.

Nina Easton

#36. During the 2008 election, I made clear to the Obama campaign that I don't think it's wise for me to force my personal political agenda on anyone.

Questlove

#37. I've praised Obama's record on same-sex equality as enthusiastically as anyone: it's one area where his record has been impressive. I understand, and have expressed, the emotional importance for LGBT Americans of his marriage announcement as well as its political significance.

Glenn Greenwald

#38. President Obama has a strong record of doing what is best for America and Florida, and he built it by spending more time worrying about what his decisions would mean for the people than for his political fortunes.

Charlie Crist

#39. Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.

Barack Obama

#40. Was President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage crassly political? God, I hope so.

Timothy Noah

#41. President Obama has adopted a practice of picking and choosing which laws he wants to enforce. In most cases, his laws of choice conveniently coincide with his administration's political agenda.

Tom Rice

#42. Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.

Ron Fournier

#43. You can't believe that AIDS is a curse from God against Gays without accepting that Lyme Disease is a curse from the same God against Deer Hunters ...

T. Rafael Cimino

#44. It's a matter of fact that Senator Obama has spent more money on negative ads than any political campaign in history.

John McCain

#45. You can stick a fork in Barack Obama. Politically, he's done. The main way we can screw this up is if we choose the wrong Republican.

Tim Pawlenty

#46. No president in modern times has come to power with less political experience or less managerial experience. On the other hand, no president has come to power with a clearer record of political extremism. As senator, Barack Obama had the most left-wing voting record in the Senate ...

Bob Tyrrell

#47. Corporate communications will become a high-tech art, just as political communication is for Obama.

Tina Brown

#48. It's always amusing to see how much less the political class knows than the rest of us do ... it's never occurred to [the likes of Senators Brownback and Obama] that they bear a worse stigma than any AIDS patient, being almost universally regarded as blowhards, crooks, dopes, and fools.

Stephen D. Cox

#49. Policies that support families aren't political issues. They're personal. They're the causes I carry with me every single day.

Michelle Obama

#50. Medicare in particular will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.

Barack Obama

#51. Given his campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan, I think I myself, our commanders, and our troops had expected more commitment to the cause and more passion for it from him. ...I never doubted Obama's support for the troops, only his support for their mission." Pg. 299

Robert M. Gates

#52. Obama's view of the tax code is inherently political: Whom can we hit next? Energy companies, jet owners, bankers? Instead, the question should be how to promote economic efficiency by raising revenue without trying to manipulate corporate or personal behavior.

John Sununu

#53. And let me say this as a politician I can promise you this, political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things.

Barack Obama

#54. A lot of people who voted for Barack Obama expected and were led to expect something new in politics: a new tone of political discourse in Washington. And I think - I think they're disappointed, because Barack Obama is not a new kind of politician. In fact, he's an old Chicago politician.

Bernard Goldberg

#55. In the end, no amount of American forces can solve the political differences that lie at the heart of somebody else's civil war.

Barack Obama

#56. We've gotta restore the American people's confidence in the ethics process by ensuring that political self-interest can no longer prevent politicians from enforcing ethics rules.

Barack Obama

#57. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans' anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed.

Frank Rich

#58. We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food-stamp president in the American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.

Newt Gingrich

#59. From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.

Narendra Modi

#60. It's the spring of 2012, that the [Barak] Obama administration would be embracing the argument that the Affordable Care Act was a tax, and that was going to, itself, be a political albatross.

Donald Verrilli Jr.

#61. We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, Aug. 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.

Barack Obama

#62. Netanyahu is partnering up with Boehner to kick Obama in the teeth and sabotage one of the president's top diplomatic priorities. He is essentially telling American Jews to get lost: 'I have no regard for the president you support and no regard for your own political needs and desires.'

David Corn

#63. President Obama said he is going to use the Gulf disaster to push a new energy bill through Congress. How about using the Gulf disaster to fix the Gulf disaster?

Jay Leno

#64. The problem, gentlemen, is that Obama is right: The promise of upward mobility is dying in America, and no amount of political demagoguery will fix it.

Ron Fournier

#65. Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions.

Barack Obama

#66. You would have to say his number one accomplishment has been to inspire a sense of confidence in the country. That confidence, that optimism, not only gives President Obama a political cushion, but it could have a real world economic impact.

George Stephanopoulos

#67. A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world ...

Jonah Goldberg

#68. I'm a registered independent. I don't really believe in political parties. Bottom line: Mitt Romney's tax policy helps me. But I can't stomach seeing somebody go hungry or somebody not being able to get an education because I want more. So, I'm supporting Barack Obama.

Brian J. White

#69. The big story today, Barack Obama was accused of insulting Sarah Palin when he criticized Republican policies by saying, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Political experts say that if Obama keeps insulting Palin, he could lose the election and win a job at MSNBC.

Conan O'Brien

#70. Its [Dreams from My Father] also a reflection about how we might start a better conversation in our democracy about how to solve problems, because it feels as if our political system - it just seems there is so much cynicism and negativity in our politics.

Barack Obama

#71. It was a pleasure to meet President Obama and Michelle. I'm not a political person, but I admire what he has done.

Patricia McBride

#72. Let's face it, Obama is not a hugely popular political figure in the state of Texas.

Wendy Davis

#73. Whatever else the election of Barack Obama represented - some have called it redemption, others have called it the triumph of style over substance - it was the ultimate victory for people who believe that black political gains are of utmost importance to black progress in America.

Jason L. Riley

#74. 'Dreams From My Father' reveals more about Obama than is usually known about political leaders until after they're dead. Perhaps more than it intends, it shows his mind working, in real time, sentence by sentence, in what feels like a private audience with the reader.

Jonathan Raban

#75. My finely honed political instincts tell me that almost nobody believes that they should be paying higher taxes.

Barack Obama

#76. If we're able to stop Obama on [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him and we will show that we can, along with the American people, begin to push those freedom solutions that work in every area of our society.

Jim DeMint

#77. Like John Kennedy in 1960, Obama combines youth, vigor, and good looks with the promise of political change. Like Kennedy, he grew up in unusual circumstances that distance him from ordinary American life.

Virginia Postrel

#78. Obama dreams of a society without power relations, without the agonism that constitutes political life. Against such a position one might assert that justice is always an agon, a conflict, and to refuse this assertion is to consign human beings to wallow in some emotional, fusional balm.

Simon Critchley

#79. Most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives
professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.

Barack Obama

#80. The Internet empowers individuals to play a more active role in the political process, as Obama's campaign has manifested.

Al Gore

#81. [J]ust from a political perspective, do you think the president of the United States going into re-election wants gas prices to go up higher? ... Look, here's the bottom line with respect to gas prices: I want gas prices lower because they hurt families.

Barack Obama

#82. President Obama has called for economic and political empowerment of women globally. The Equal Futures Partnership promotes removal of policy, legal, and regulatory barriers that hold women back at local, state and national levels.

Lael Brainard

#83. No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.

Sebastian Junger

#84. The capacity of Iraq's security forces has improved, and Iraq's leaders have made strides toward political accommodation

Barack Obama

#85. Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22-out-of-30 top al-Qaida leaders who've been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever is left out there, ask them about that.

Barack Obama

#86. Michelle Obama has gone from political skeptic to political partner to a woman with a White House agenda of her own, and an approval rating higher than the president's.

Jodi Kantor

#87. This is President Obama's number one political agenda item because he knows we will never again have a Republican president, ever, if amnesty goes into effect.

Michele Bachmann

#88. We should try to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to find a great life. It's a quest that will require political will and ingenious policies. President Obama's proposed expansion of the earned-income tax credit goes in this direction, but we need more.

Sendhil Mullainathan

#89. Obama has placed himself in perfect political position: he spent the 2008 campaign convincing the American people that he's a racial unifier rather than a divider, without any evidence to prove it.

Ben Shapiro

#90. The terms of peace may be negotiated by political leaders, but the fate of peace is up to each of us.

Barack Obama

#91. Listening to evangelicals bridges major political fault line.

Barack Obama

#92. Obama considers himself above deal-making and back-slapping, political necessities he often delegates to Vice President Joe Biden and other lesser sorts.

Ron Fournier

#93. I had never supported a political figure - and I went out and supported Obama.

Will Ferrell

#94. Obama's coalition would have consigned him to the political margins as little as 12 years ago, but the nation's demographic changes are moving far more quickly than most Republicans anticipated.

John Podhoretz

#95. People have to recognize that it's going to take some time for trust to be built, not only between Democrats and Republicans but between Congress and the White House, between the House and the Senate. You know, we've had a dysfunctional political system for a while now.

Barack Obama

#96. As a candidate, Obama disdained the game of politics, a self-conscious contrast to all the tireless political athletes named Clinton.

Nancy Gibbs

#97. Beginning with the stimulus, Obama has repeatedly inserted the government into the free market for political reasons - and with disastrous results.

Reince Priebus

#98. Like Hillary Clinton before her, Mrs. Obama has always been a working woman. She is a lawyer turned hospital administrator turned political right hand. It is a unique resume.

Andre Leon Talley

#99. If you spend 72 hours in a place you've never been, talking to people whose language you don't speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don't understand, and you come back as the world's biggest know-it-all, you're a reporter. Either that or you're President Obama.

P. J. O'Rourke

#100. True leadership will not be measured by the ability to muzzle dissent, or to intimidate and harass political opponents at home. The people of the world want change. They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.

Barack Obama