Meg Greenfield

If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

Since when do grown men and women who presume to hold high government office and exercise what they think of as "moral leadership " require ethics officers to tell them whether it is or isn't permissible to grab the secretary's behind or redirect public funds to their own personal advantage?

Talking too much too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster.