Lis Smith > Quotes

“Politics at its worst is ugly, but politics at its best is . . . magnificent. Because it’s not just about policy. It is soul craft. And it is moral.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“She didn’t understand the cardinal rule of media: if you don’t feed the beast, it will feed on you.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“hadn’t seen the quote in any other coverage or on Twitter, so I tweeted it out to my now-few thousand followers. From there it took on a life of its own—the New York Times and viral online outlets like BuzzFeed posted stories about it. It was all over cable news that night, including Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC. A single tweet disrupted the presidential news cycle, throwing Romney’s campaign off message for days.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“He could be more blunt at times. That weirdo reporter who wouldn’t make eye contact in interviews?”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“The New York Times deemed the ad “as subtle as a playground taunt,” noting how our campaign videos often featured “unattractive images of Mr. Christie, sometimes shot from the side or backside, highlighting his heft, jowls and double chin.” (In fairness, none of the videos were doctored.)”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“In March, Rubio opened a rally by attacking Trump: “I’ll admit, he’s taller than me. He’s like 6′2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5′2″. Have you seen his hands? . . . And you know what they say about a man with small hands.” Rubio might as well have just come out and accused Trump of having a small dick.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Because Trump never ever let the news cycle settle on one narrative about him or calcify around one comment he gave. As soon as the horrifying transcript of his conversation with the Post was published, he was flooding the zone with other equally terrifying comments.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“On the second day of the rally, after Terry had called on it to be disbanded, a white nationalist ran over and killed a peaceful Black Lives Matter protester. Visuals from the event dominated the national news and provided Terry with the most high-profile and fraught incident he’d confront as governor. It was a defining moment of his tenure.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“It’s impossible to describe the isolation and hopelessness and darkness that consumes you when you’re in the eye of a PR shitstorm.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“I want to show people that who I date has no bearing on my professional capacity and I want to use this as motivation to become one of the best in the business. I want to prove them all wrong.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“McAuliffe emerges from Charlottesville crisis as a counterbalance to Trump.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Pete, to his credit, would respond to Rush at a Las Vegas town hall in a viral moment: The idea of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump lecturing anybody on family values. I mean, I’m sorry, but one thing about my marriage is it’s never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse, with him or her. So, if they want to debate family values, let’s debate family values, I’m ready.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Beneath the glossy, charming exteriors, politicians are still flawed human beings, and if they seem too good to be true, they usually are.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Terry may have been ahead of the curve, but finally his position became the de facto one. It was an issue where he showed political courage and prescient moral clarity.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Rubio’s crass comments did him no favors. Unfair or not, it was accepted that Trump was a boorish bully. People didn’t expect better from him. When Rubio stooped to his level, he looked—no pun intended—small and petty. He undermined his own brand as a fresh-faced, different kind of Republican. He wrestled with a pig and came out of it filthy.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Twitter brought more transparency to the behind-the-scenes machinations of campaigns.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“The viral nature of these videos forced the media to cover stories that they’d normally ignore. We created our own echo chamber.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Eliot’s animus reminded me of a Herman Hesse quote I’d read in high school: “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“There’s no such thing as a moral victory in politics. Either you win or you lose. “Moral victory” is usually just a euphemism for losing.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Perversely, it’s had the opposite effect. It’s reduced politics to a spectator sport, where meaningless minute-by-minute developments are blown out of proportion, turning the smallest stories into the biggest ones.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“He asked thoughtful, granular questions about media strategy—how to get attention in a multicandidate field where he was the least well known quantity; how the national media worked—everything from how I’d get meetings with national reporters or bookings on national TV to how I’d help craft a message for his campaign and sell it in a way that was compelling to the media and a national Democratic audience but still true to him.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“If he could dehumanize his opponents, why couldn’t we? It calls to mind a famous quote frequently attributed to George Bernard Shaw—and no, this isn’t me making a fat joke—“Don’t wrestle with pigs. You both get filthy and the pig likes it.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“In the world of public relations, it’s tempting to correct every falsehood and error, but sometimes—painful as it might seem—it’s better to just let it go. Our”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“What made the movie so radical at the time was that it pulled back the curtain on how the sausage was made during campaigns. It showed how staff placed narratives about their opponents, and how they shaped stories long before they hit the papers or the airwaves.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“I feigned calm even as every part of me was in turmoil—my brain was churning likely tabloid headlines and my stomach was doing somersaults.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“The allure of the political game is the draw of any given Tuesday—the belief that for every loss, there’s a winning candidate or cause or campaign that redeems your faith in the process and creates the positive change you’ve been seeking all along.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“I’d crossed the Rubicon from being a person who “handled” stories to being the person featured in the story.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“office. Even the most noble politicians possess a healthy streak of narcissism.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“Clinton was a dominant presumptive nominee: she had 100 percent name ID, the support of the majority of the political establishment, and money up the wazoo. And yet the loyalty that she inspired in some people was matched by the antipathy she stoked in others.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller

“No matter what we like to tell ourselves. Every one of us can do good or bad things every day. You can stick up for a friend with the utmost integrity and then go to work and do something that compromises your values. You can spend all day making your community a better place and then go home and hurt someone you love.”
― Lis Smith, Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story – An Entertaining and Intimate New York Times Bestseller