The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate consultant pundit and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.

When I first started working in politics as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.

I never have been involved in politics.

Because politics rests on an irreducible measure of coercion it can never become a perfect realm of perfect love and justice.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.

I never thought of politics as a profession.

One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President.

I guess you'd call me an independent since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves no matter what the party label.

In politics... never retreat never retract... never admit a mistake.