Mark McKinnon
As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum.Collection: Politics
Hypocrisy is the scarlet letter in politics.Collection: Politics
The problem with State of the Union speeches is that they are, by their nature and design, alphabet soup. It's hard to know what a president really cares about when they run down a laundry list and check every issue box under the sun for fear they will offend some constituency if they don't.Collection: Design
Technology and social media have brought power back to the people.Collection: Power
Washington doesn't have just a spending problem, or just an entitlement problem, or just a taxing problem. We have a leadership problem. Fix that, and the first three problems are solved.Collection: Leadership
Republicans working in leadership and the trenches are largely old, white, male, out-of-touch, out of ideas, technology averse, and living in the past.Collection: Leadership
America glories in its tradition of the self-made individual. Political candidates compete to be a friend to entrepreneurs, and policymakers, imagining the next Microsoft or Google, design laws to back the innovator in the garage.Collection: Design
Presidents should do whatever possible and practical to encourage an environment of cooperation and bipartisanship. And they should maintain a certain level of decorum, diplomacy and decency. But, at the end of the day, presidents get elected to enact change.Collection: The End Of The Day
America's commitment to religious freedom and tolerance should not be conditional.Collection: Religious
To pull off successful attacks in debates, you have to execute with nuance and subtlety. It has to be artful.Collection: Successful
Limited government, low taxes, controlled spending and debt, and a restrained regulatory environment make Texas work.Collection: Government
At some point he has to show that he has a vision of a better way. He can't just say 'The future is bleak, follow me.' Because no one will.Collection: Vision
As a Republican, I never expected to be working with Hillary Clinton.Collection: Republican
Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.Collection: Party
I don't really care how or why Obama got to the right place on gay marriage. I'm just glad he got there.Collection: Gay
It's much more powerful and compelling to create a positive vision than it is to tear somebody down.Collection: Powerful
Debates require a lot of hard work and preparation. If you try to wing it, it shows.Collection: Hard Work
Mention the name George W. Bush in mixed company, and you're likely to spark a lot of debate and emotion - hot and cold, good and bad. Not a lot of neutral reaction. He was elected in the most controversial contest in American electoral history and governed during one of the most tumultuous decades.Collection: Hot And Cold
If we cannot come together to pause, to respect our dead and the heroic lives of meaning they led, then ours is truly a civilization lost.Collection: Civilization
Elections are about the future. And the GOP will not win a campaign focused on the past.Collection: Winning
A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.Collection: Democracy
It's just madness. First email. Then instant message. Then MySpace. Then Facebook. Then LinkedIn. Then Twitter. It's not enough anymore to 'Just do it.' Now we have to tell everyone we are doing it, when we are doing it, where we are doing it and why we are doing it.Collection: Messages
A Rick Santorum presidency would be very, very dangerous for America.Collection: America
Democrats love to criticize Republicans on guns, but they are generally mute when it comes to taking on Hollywood or the gaming industry.Collection: Gun
I'm saying it loud: I'm a Republican who supports gay rights.Collection: Gay
Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Collection: Suicide
Go Hard or Go Home, but never go home hard!Collection: Motivational
A competition of the best ideas - that should be what Congress is about.Collection: Ideas
My brother is one of my true heroes. Steady and sober where I am impulsive and emotional.Collection: Brother
As a husband and as a father of girls, I cannot imagine any woman in my family making the sacrifice of sanity required to run for office. The limited reward for public service cannot blunt the cost.Collection: Girl
Marketers know - no matter how deep the emotional connection or brand loyalty - when a product does not perform, rational thought overtakes emotion, and most consumers make a new choice.Collection: Loyalty
Mitt Romney is a businessman, a turnaround artist, a CEO. That is who he is. The former governor has experience in the public and private sector.Collection: Artist
America as we know it will end unless we end Medicare as we know it.Collection: America
Negativity drove me out of politics in the mid-Nineties.Collection: Negativity
I've spent the better part of my career in politics and public policy working on and fighting for education reforms.Collection: Fighting
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree on policy.Collection: People
Every day I am being told to sign up for Tumblr, Yammer, Friendfeed, Plaxo, Last.fm, ping.fm or the hot social-media tool du jour that happened to get mentioned on Mashable.com. It is like a social-media arms race. Each one of these new tools is like a cool new night club. Hot today, gone tomorrow, replaced with something else.Collection: Night
Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world.Collection: Long
Contrary to conventional military and game theory, the most effective offense is sometimes a direct attack against your political opponent's greatest strength - not his weaknesses - to place him immediately on the defensive.Collection: Military
There's no question that many factors contribute to voters' perceptions about debates and who wins and who loses.Collection: Winning
I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader.Collection: Government
I think the press has an interest in communicating to its viewers or readers, and their viewers or readers drive profit for those news organizations, so I think those news organizations have a certain bias toward their own readers. Yeah, I think they are a special interest. Of course they are.Collection: Thinking
As history has repeatedly proven, one trade tariff begets another, then another - until you've got a full-blown trade war. No one ever wins, and consumers always get screwed.Collection: War