Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Popularity:
“This is not one person doing one bad thing. You can't have a corrupt lobbyist unless you have a corrupt member (of Congress) or a corrupt staff. ... This was a team effort.”
“Any effort to explain Iraq as 'We are on track and making progress' is nonsense, ... The left has a constant drumbeat that this is Vietnam and a bottomless pit. The daily and weekly casualties leave people feeling that things aren't going well.”
“This is a crossroads for the Bush presidency, ... This is a very exciting period about what is effective government in the 21st century. Either he will be FDR and lead a dramatic change of government, or he will be defender of a failed system. The biggest political challenge for the next two years is to re-centre the government.”
“I could hardly stand by and allow the party to cannibalize itself in that situation, and I felt it (the decision to step down) was best for all of us.”
“Frankly I believe that there's too little funding for intelligence, we have too few assets and too few analysts. And I think if the Congress and others are going to demand a greater capacity in intelligence we're going to have to be prepared to pay for a more sophisticated and a more intense structure of intelligence capabilities, and I think its wrong for some members of Congress to vote to cut intelligence spending, to vote to cut the number of intelligence analysts and then to set unrealistically high demands on the intelligence community.”
“I don't think the Congress could move forward only on Lewinsky, unless he had such a clear case, such an overpowering case, ... But I think we would be better served to know the whole story.”
