Latest George Packer Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• We've just been sort of spinning our wheels for such a long time, for decades really, with each new president being considered illegitimate by the other side. That's been the case ever since Bill Clinton. And it's a - you can't keep frittering away your political capital that way and expect there not to be some long-term rot that sets in.

  George Packer

  Long, Political, President

  Source: www.npr.org

• The biggest issue for me is whether large numbers of Americans can begin to think that government can actually help make the country a fairer place. And that's partly a matter of policies that achieve results in terms of reducing inequality and raising middle-class and working-class incomes, which have been flat for decades. But it's also symbolic and rhetorical, it's whether Hillary Clinton can - or whoever's president - can persuade Americans that it's happening and that they can begin to trust their elected officials a little bit more and their institutions of government a little bit more.

  George Packer

  Country, Thinking, Class

  Source: www.npr.org

• If Hillary Clinton becomes president, how is she going to be able to get the country behind her when she seems like a political figure from another era?

  George Packer

  Country, Political, President

  Source: www.npr.org

• Hillary Clinton's such a classic Democratic political figure and believes so much in institutions and in gradualism in the old way of reaching compromises with the opposition in the back rooms. That's what she did in Congress. It's what I imagine she'll try to do in the White House.

  George Packer

  Believe, White, House

  Source: www.npr.org

• I don't think of Hillary Clinton as a bad choice. She's an uninspiring choice. She is a deeply imperfect choice, largely for reasons of her own tendency to get into a defensive crouch and create greater problems for herself and the rest of us by refusing to have a transparent reckoning.

  George Packer

  Thinking, Choices, Imperfect

  "The 'Dangerous, Volatile Game' Trump Plays With The White Working Class". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, wmra.org. November 3, 2016.

• I do think Donald Trump would be a catastrophic turn in American history.

  George Packer

  Thinking, Would Be, American History

  Source: www.npr.org

• Politics should be, you know, as exciting as literature, as exciting film.

  George Packer

  Literature, Film, Should

  Source: www.npr.org

• Politics should seize the imagination.

  George Packer

  Imagination, Should

  Source: www.npr.org

• When you go to Washington and get off at Union Station, as I sometimes do, and see the Capitol building, I get this hopeless feeling that comes over me.

  George Packer

  Feelings, Unions, Hopeless

  "The 'Dangerous, Volatile Game' Trump Plays With The White Working Class". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, listen.sdpb.org. November 3, 2016.

• This is what Newt Gingrich has wrought - is a politics in which it's very easy to destroy and very hard to build.

  George Packer

  Easy, Newts, Hard

  Source: www.npr.org

• People in Congress are willing to shut down the entire government or to make it impossible for a Supreme Court nominee to get a hearing or for routine appointments in the executive branch to go unfilled for years because of a hold placed by a senator.

  George Packer

  Government, Years, People

  Source: www.npr.org

• This is why mustard gas is such a danger or any weapon of mass destruction is such a dangerous thing because it - it's victims become everyone in the end.

  George Packer

  Mass Destruction, Weapons, Victim

  Source: www.npr.org

• I think it's important for Americans to try to understand each other a little better.

  George Packer

  Thinking, Important, Trying

  "The 'Dangerous, Volatile Game' Trump Plays With The White Working Class". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 3, 2016.

• What goes on in a person's head, what impels them to a political choice, it's a pretty complicated question.

  George Packer

  Choices, Political, Goes On

  Source: www.npr.org

• There's the basket of deplorables, who are bigots of various stripes, misogynists, anti-Muslim, racists, homophobes.

  George Packer

  Stripes, Racist, Baskets

  Source: www.npr.org

• I don't know how we continue to do politics in a democracy if we simply can't listen to one another, if we simply close the door and say you are beyond redemption.

  George Packer

  Doors, Democracy, Redemption

  Source: www.npr.org

• Playing to resentment and using a lot of, you know, grand abstract phrases like make America great again is - it just doesn't have the answer. It's simply a way to whip up emotion and then leave people more bitter than you found them.

  George Packer

  America, People, Phrases

  Source: www.npr.org

• Hillary Clinton would say I'm going to fund a program that will find the local, you know, industrial or manufacturing jobs that are available and train you to do that job. And then you're going to get that job. And it's a much more of a nuts and bolts sort of policy vision.

  George Packer

  Jobs, Nuts, Vision

  Source: www.npr.org

• Hillary Clinton said we need to bring back vocational education in high school. We need to support community colleges. We need to make sure that people who are not going to finish college have a job waiting for them and the skills to do the job. These are all - have become fairly standard Democratic policy positions.

  George Packer

  Jobs, School, College

  Source: www.npr.org

• I really do put it on Bill Clinton's presidency as the time when the Democrats became the party of the college degree as the key to success in life.

  George Packer

  Party, College, Keys

  Source: www.npr.org

• I think in the '50s, the percentage of Americans employed by the private sector who were in unions was above 30 percent. And now it's in the single digits, so it plummeted. And with the plummeting of unions came the weakening of an organized working-class voice in politics.

  George Packer

  Thinking, Class, Voice

  Source: www.npr.org

• Globalization looked like it was going to answer all the economic questions of class. Turned out not to be the case.

  George Packer

  Class, Answers, Economic

  Source: www.npr.org

• Under Bill Clinton we had a roaring economy that looked really good.

  George Packer

  Roaring, Bills, Economy

  Source: www.npr.org

• The ranks of educated professional swelled as more Americans went to college and more Americans sort of adopted a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and worldview. And as the Democrats were looking for an alternative to the unions who no longer seemed like a large enough base for the party, they found the educated who veered more toward a progressive cultural outlook, who may have had - may have been working in the financial sector, in entertainment, in media, in universities. That became really the rank and file of the Democratic Party over a long period of time.

  George Packer

  Party, College, Media

  Source: www.npr.org

• We all have a dark side but we keep it in its place because it's destructive. And Donald Trump has said, no, no, bring it out because that's the energy we need in order to reverse all these horrible things that have been happening in America.

  George Packer

  Dark, Order, America

  "The 'Dangerous, Volatile Game' Trump Plays With The White Working Class". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 3, 2016.