I feel like I owe it to the readers to try to pull back the veil and give them the honest version of what's going on. But it's not more fun. If Obama, as he does sometimes already, gets a little snippy with me about something I've written, you're thinking, 'Oh God, the president of the United States is already annoyed with me.'
Maureen DowdWe are riveted by the soap operas of public lives. We admire the famous most for what makes them infamous: it reassures us that they are not better and no happier than all the people with their noses pressed hard against the glass.
Maureen DowdThe Mormons even baptized Anne Frank. It took Ernest Michel, then chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, three years to get Mormons to agree to stop proxy-baptizing Holocaust victims.
Maureen DowdYet it's true that looks matter in politics... It is also true that perfecting the outer shell has become an obsession in this country... Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and John Edwards almost always look good, and pretty much the same, in dark suits or casual wear. Fred Thompson always looks crepuscular and droopy. Often Hillary Clinton looks great, and sometimes she looks tired, heavier or puffier.
Maureen DowdI think Hillary Clinton's a very clever politician but she would be too easy to stereotype the way John Kerry was.
Maureen DowdPresident Bush was once asked which Presidential speech he admired most. He replied that it was the one Teddy Roosevelt had in his pocket that had helped cushion the blow of a would-be assassin's bullet.
Maureen Dowd