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Message discipline is the concept that politicians and other public policy advocates should talk about what is relevant to achieve their aims, and not allow themselves to be sidetracked either by their own thoughts or the questions of press or audience. When a politician repeats the same thing over and over, or uses a question on one subject as a launching pad to talk about a different subject, he or she is said to be exercising message discipline.^{[citation needed]}

Message discipline is a difficult thing for politicians or other quotable people to achieve, because it may involve a subordination of one's personal opinions, or a subordination of one's desire to say what others want to hear.

Politicians that have famously had trouble with message discipline include former US Vice-President Hubert Humphrey (he spoke at great length, so that his message was sometimes lost), former Philadelphia Mayor Frank L. Rizzo (at one point he stopped speaking to the press for a two year period because he was too frequently goaded into making inflammatory statements)^{[citation needed]}, former President Richard Nixon (his tapes forced him to resign and deeply scarred his historical reputation)^{[citation needed]}, former President Ronald Reagan (his ruminations about nuclear war, pollution-causing trees, and other subjects led to both fear and ridicule), and former Presidential candidate Howard Dean (his concession speech and enthusiastic YAAAAH! after the Iowa caucuses before a noisy audience was so loud that he appeared to be un-Presidential).^{[citation needed]} On the other hand, US President George W. Bush practices message discipline. In May 2005 he commented; See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.[1]

One goal of political opponents is often to take candidates away from message discipline by heckling, questioning, or releasing damaging personal information. In the current environment of a 24 hour news cycle, large number of commercial media outlets, volunteer blogs and citizen organizations, professionalized opposition research, many negative adverts, and countless other distractions, message discipline is very difficult for candidates to achieve.^{[citation needed]}