Nationalism is not that hard. It's not that hard to incite people against another, and it's also - and this is the harder thing: Democrats have, and the challenge we have all the time, is we believe in governing and governance and trying to find middle ground.

Jon Lovett

Categorized in : Challenge People Believe Time

I will never apologize for selective editing to make myself look better.

Jon Lovett

better never myself look

It's so unfair that Barack Obama, this cool, charming guy, also has good comedic timing.

Jon Lovett

good cool timing unfair

I'll always cringe remembering those little embarrassing moments when I said something dumb on a conference call, when my inexperience poked through, when I should have been more solicitous of the judgment of those around me. They're a reminder that it's not mutually exclusive to be confident and humble, to be skeptical and eager to learn.

Jon Lovett

me dumb moments humble

America needs a strong, rational, positive, practical conservative movement. It needs that bulwark against liberal delusion and hubris. It needs a voice that says we are imperfect, that life is complex, that government can create need even as it meets need, that you can't fix everything, and freedom is worth some danger and sorrow.

Jon Lovett

you freedom positive life

One of the hardest lessons of childhood is reckoning with the instability of the world.

Jon Lovett

childhood hardest lessons world

When I was a kid, all I knew about Michael Jackson was that he was crazy. He had a monkey named Bubbles and some kind of oxygen chamber, and he used to be black, but he made himself white, and he was nuts. That was Michael Jackson in full. Wacko Jacko.

Jon Lovett

monkey black crazy white

When in doubt, mock the powerful, not the powerless.

Jon Lovett

when-in-doubt mock powerful doubt

One of the lessons of 2016 is to spend less time worrying about what will happen and more time worrying about what we want to happen.

Jon Lovett

happen will want time

Life tests our willingness, in ways large and small, to tell the truth.

Jon Lovett

small tell truth life

A great speech can make you remember something about what you believe, about who you are, about who you want to be. It's rare when that kind of thing happens. But it is important, and it is real.

Jon Lovett

great you remember believe

There is that definition of leadership that says, 'Leadership is convincing people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't have done because you've made them believe it's the right thing to do.' And a great speech can do that.

Jon Lovett

great you leadership people

I'm famously humble.

Jon Lovett

humble

One thing that is for certain is that there are tens of millions of people who are deeply unsatisfied with the way they get their political news.

Jon Lovett

news political people way

It's a reasonable thing to tell somebody, 'I've watched 70 hours of 'Game of Thrones.'' That's a totally normal, boring thing to say about yourself. But if you were like, 'I just spent 100 hours playing 'Skyrim,'' people think you're a weirdo.

Jon Lovett

yourself game you people

Washington is filled with people making other people's arguments for money.

Jon Lovett

other making money people

Sometimes you're going to be inexperienced, naive, untested, and totally right. And then, in those moments, you have to make a choice: is this a time to speak up, or hang back?

Jon Lovett

you speak time sometimes

I worked on one speech about the financial system that caused the Dow to drop, like, 200 points.

Jon Lovett

about like financial speech

The Internet didn't cause Donald Trump, and it certainly can't solve Donald Trump.

Jon Lovett

donald-trump cause solve internet

We are drowning in information.

Jon Lovett

drowning information

We don't want people to be afraid of saying something interesting on the off chance it's taken the wrong way.

Jon Lovett

saying chance people way