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It's just a lot safer to be an incumbent. So I think they have used the campaign finance reforms. They have passed laws that will help themselves stay in office. And I think that's one of the flaws that we do have in the system.

David Brooks

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David Brooks
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: August 22
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City of Toronto
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More quotes by David Brooks

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One of the frustrations about the modern world is that we don't even have a good vocabulary to describe our state. The word sentiment sounds mushy. [...] Sentiment is not mushy.
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I do think creating an open free-trade economy but with strong social support is the way to go.
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Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being.
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Every White House I have covered since Reagan, when I got here, power has been more concentrated in the White House than the one before.
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Courage is the most important virtue because it is the hardest.
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I generally think the president [Donald Trump] should get his Cabinet picks, unless they're egregiously out of the range, either ethically or intellectually out of the range of what's acceptable.
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I would have swapped out Donald Trump's frontal cortex for somebody else's for a little more self-control.
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People tend to marry people with similar-width noses, eyes similarly apart, with complementary immune systems.
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Our emotions tell us what to value. They're like a little GPS system: Go that way. Don't go that way.
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One of the things I think about with Donald Trump is what are his words actually attached to? With Trump, I'm not sure the words have roots. They are emanations of his psyche, but has he thought it through? Is there an argument, is there a policy implication?
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Russia has a very sophisticated, advanced attack on U.S. businesses and U.S. government and U.S. institutions. And it's not like Donald Trump is going to be walking away from this. He will be spending a lot of time on it, if he's any sort of normal president.
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When you get a big crisis, everyone wants somebody with some experience and some credibility.
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If you withdraw from the game, you're out of the game. And we have withdrawn from the game. And we said Bashar Assad has to go. He's going to stay. So we're out of the game.
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I sort of feel we have to owe some respect to the process and owe some respect to the electorate and the people who voted Donald Trump, on the assumption that they have something to teach us.
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People who give money in large amount in politics are basically not altruistic. They have some issue. They have some interest. It may be world peace. It may be preserving carried interest. But it's not altruistic.
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When you cover politics, you realize that knowing how to talk about character matters more and more. The way we hold ideas is more important than the ideas.
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Donald Trump's being authentic to what he ran on and what got elected.
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I generally think debates within a party should not be treated as a scandal. They should be treated as a sign of strength, to be honest.
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Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Marine Le Pen seem to have no respect for the institutions that were created after World War II, and they see a potential alliance of populists around the world who would fight Islam and restore a certain semblance of traditional values.
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The madman theory is that you can be a successful deterrer if you - if they think you could be crazy. And so I think it can be very effective, so long as you're not actually crazy.
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