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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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We have rapidly increasing technology, which is making life very good for people who are good at using words, and not so good for people who are not good at using words.
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I think there are two basic approaches you can use for campaign finance. One is complete openness, everybody knows absolutely everything, but no limits. But you let people decide.The other is just have a national public system.
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You have to have a plan, or else you're just creating a recipe for chaos.
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Israel is a country of six million people. They need the U.S. It used to be bipartisan on Israeli politics. You never messed with that relationship. The fact that [ Benjamin] Netanyahu is willing to do that, I thought would horrify voters more than it turned out it did.
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Some children lack tools to see their course in the world in far-sighted ways. Just introducing school vouchers won't change that. You have to have nurse-home partnerships, early childhood education, mentoring programs and so on. People learn from people they love.
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We have the choice to choose how we're going to educate our emotions.
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There is the English language and then there's the Trump language.
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The core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it's the [Bush] haters themselves.
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People have been raised in a morality that says, If it feels all right for you, it's probably OK.
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The moral foundation of the society, the way we interact with each other is more fundamental than the Supreme Court.
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It's rare in an administration for a secretary of state and a secretary of defense to get along really well.
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The drugs are just growing all around the country, and so, it all feeds into problems that are not just urban, but are just spread throughout the country.
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Politics really is a team sport. You really have to work the whole system to get somewhere down the road.
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The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.
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I don't think history will ever be a science because history will never be reduced to law-like behavior. People are to unpredictable.
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I think we are all disgusted by the way George W. Bush's administration has allowed honesty and candor to seep into the genteel world of international affairs.
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Much of life is about failure, whether we acknowledge it or not, and your destiny is profoundly shaped by how effectively you learn from and adapt to failure.
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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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President-elect [Donald] Trump's ambassador to Israel is further to the right than almost anyone in Israel, further to the right than Bibi Netanyahu on the settlements, and almost opposes the two-state solution, doesn't he?
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