Joe Klein

For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.

If there was one fact that sent me hurtling off to write 'Politics Lost,' it was when I learned that John Kerry had focus-grouped Abu Ghraib. We knew about the Justice Department memo in June of 2004, and Kerry didn't raise that in any one of his three debates with George Bush.

Bush the Elder's stature as president grows with every passing year. He was the finest foreign policy president I've ever covered and a man who defied his party on tax increases while imposing budget restrictions on the Democrats.

You know that Moses was spinning like crazy in Exodus XIV through XVII when the Jewish people wanted to go back and become a place again because tramping through the desert was a bit too hard.

Back in George W. Bush's second term, when diplomatic realism began to overtake foolish bellicosity, the president developed one of his patented nicknames for the two most powerful neoconservative journalists, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer: he called them 'the Bomber Boys.'

I've been described as a grizzled political veteran.

I came to political consciousness with John F. Kennedy's magnificent 1961 Inaugural Address. It seemed the start of something fresh and exciting, and it was.

This dilettante notion that the global economy is evil because big corporate leaders make too much money... they do make too much money, but the only way we've figured out how to generate wealth in this world is through the market economy.

If he'd been negotiating Obamacare, Lincoln would have made the infamous 'Cornhusker Kickback' deal - $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska to secure a Senator's vote - in a heartbeat, even if the press howled as it did when Barack Obama agreed to it, forcing its cancellation.

You know, when George Bush talks about freedom not being America's gift to world but God's gift to all humankind, it smells like market testing to me.

I'm in favour of politicians having extra-marital relationships. Oh yeah. It makes them more understanding of the flaws that the rest of us have.