I Didn't Coin The Phrase: All Politics Is Local, But I Certainly Agree With It !

All Politics Is Local
In Your Own Backyard  
While most attention in the coming week will focus on the national presidential election, thousands of statewide contests around the country will also be decided on November 7. What does it take to make a successful run for local office?

Thomas "Tip" O'Neill—a longtime Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress—once declared,

"All politics is local." He was explaining how the problems and concerns of towns and cities around the country affect the actions of their representatives and senators in Washington, D.C.

source: http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2000/10/103000_politic.jhtml

“A former long-time speaker of the House of Representatives, a jowly, affable, ruddily-nosed old Irishman, Tip O'Neill, once told me.
"Because," he said, "all politics is local."
"We don't talk about our constituency, we try to find Mary Byrne a job, smooth the palm of a cop who made a wrongful arrest, take old Mrs McCarthy and her sister to the polls, get young Paddy off the bottle and into a job."
Plus, he didn't say, what a famous New York city politician called "honest graft".
Honest graft, it now says in the books, is no longer permissible - as we used to say, is zat so?
The man who invented the term was describing money made or favours granted as a result of political power but without doing anything strictly illegal.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/letter_from_
america/2397565.stm