John Podhoretz

“Whether my columns are worth reading isn't for me to say.”

“Comedians and impressionists used to be two different showbiz animals entirely, but now there's no such thing as a comedian who doesn't do impressions.”

“Vice presidents are at times tasked with issuing direct broadsides against enemies while the top guy stays above the fray. But never before has a vice president served as an attack dog against his own party's voters.”

“Making recess appointments when the Senate isn't in recess is neither rational nor moderate. It's a raw misuse of executive power by a president whose love of government is his most vulnerable spot with the electorate.”

“By the time Obama came into office, Washington had already agreed over a period of a few weeks to a $700 billion government infusion into the world banking system. Nothing of the sort had ever been done before, and it was done spit spot with very little national debate.”

“But like a born actor who only really wants to direct, Gingrich has always been unsatisfied with what he's brilliant at. He can't still his hunger to deliver grand pronouncements on life, liberalism, conservatism, religion and whatever else swims into his consciousness.”

“Obama's presidency hasn't been dedicated to achieving economic growth in the short term, or about creating jobs.”

“She needs to seem tough, and whatever Hillary's weaknesses, tough is a pretty good word to describe her.”

“Some candidates need to say provocative things that make noise to break through the media muffle and get themselves noticed.”

“This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud; he sits upon the throne.”

“All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.”

“I've worked as someone's deputy, and now it's time for me to run something. It's time for me to run my own shop.”

“The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state.”

“Obama learned from Ronald Reagan that it helps to strike an optimistic tone. But genuine optimism deriving from American exceptionalism, it turns out, does not come naturally to him.”

“Newt Gingrich is a very intelligent man, if he says so himself.”

“When Obama was inaugurated, he and his team had an insight - though whether the insight was conscious or not I don't know. But it was this: The TARP $700 billion price tag was a new kind of model.”

“The exit polls suggest that after a relatively disappointing first term, Obama managed to reassemble almost all of his 2008 electorate.”

“I don't feel alienated from American culture, but I understand people who do.”

“Obama is talking to voters as though he is their boss, or their principal, or their father. He is not any of those things. He is their employee. And employers don't like it when their employees yell at them - even if their employees have it right.”

“Robots have a rich and storied history in movies.”