Category: Verbatim

I can tell you with absolutely honesty that when I sit around with my political friends … there’s very little or no discussion of Sarah Palin.

— White House adviser David Axelrod, interviewed on CNN.

In my choice of words, I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically.

— President Obama, trying to do a take-back in the Oval Office today for his “stupidly” remark during Wednesday night’s prime-time press conference in reference to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct at his home in Cambridge.

I’ve been trying to do the best I can on all fronts. This time carved out for Jenny and the boys is awfully important in a family situation to put the genie back in the bottle.

— South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, in response to a television reporter who caught him in the airport before leaving for yet another vacation (his fourth since his adulterous trip to Argentina).

I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world. That’s my observation.

— Vice President Biden, overheard in a Kiev pub earlier today.

We’re going to do that crack cocaine thing.

— Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), to a witness at Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Joe the Plumber — you can quote me — is a dumbass. He should stick to plumbing.

— Meghan McCain, in an interview with Out magazine, blasting the man her father held up as the everyman during the 2008 presidential campaign.

The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare, and it takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It is frustrating beyond words. I mean, it is ridiculous. Some very good people just didn’t want to be vetted.

— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, quoted in the Washington Times.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough.

— Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, telling what she really thinks of soon-to-be ex-Gov. Sarah Palin.

You know, this is part of American culture. Michael Jackson, like Elvis, like Sinatra, when somebody who’s captivated the imagination of the country for that long passes away, people pay attention. And I assume at some point people will start focusing again on things like nuclear weapons.

— President Obama, in an interview with ABC News, trying not to sound too irritated with the media attention given to the Michael Jackson funeral.

You know, politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it.

— Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in an interview on ABC News.