Quotes about Politicians

So-called end-time speculation, which is the daily bread of many in the American religious right, is not unconnected to the agenda of some of America's leading politicians.

Part of the problem in our contemporary debates about asylum seekers or about the Middle East is that our politicians still want to present us with the dream of progress, the steady forward advance of the golden dream of freedom; and when the tide of human misery washes up on our beaches or when people in cultures very different from our own seem not to want the kind of freedom we had in mind, it is not just socially but ideologically untidy and inconvenient.

And as I write this, Romans 13:1 recently made the rounds on the American political scene to shield the administration from criticism for separating illegal immigrants from their children at the border—which is just one of many reasons why politicians should not be allowed near a Bible without adult supervision.

Cold War teaches the same lesson as World War II and, for that matter, most wars in recent history. Don't let a ruling class of warriors and politicians squash the entrepreneurs. The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries powerful. Let the nerds keep their lunch money, and you rule the world.

Desert Storm was seen by the military establishment and by some politicians as avenging Vietnam, but it left behind dangerous illusions. The victory was so decisive, and information about it so carefully managed, that the American public was never clearly informed that it was purchased at the price of approximately 100,000 Iraqi lives.

What has changed in modern times, however, is that the media, the so-called fourth estate made up of America's best and brightest journalists, are no longer trusted. Sadly that leaves the American people with no one to rely on: not the politicians; not the media. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but political systems abhor a vacuum of trust even more. If we don't find someone to fill it, someone who can unify the country behind the truth, then that vacuum will be filled for us.

Our democracy depends on a free and independent press. When politicians call reporting they don't like 'fake news,' they undermine trust in our civic organizations for their own political gain.

I can hardly tell you how boring it is to interview almost every politician among the multitudes I have ever interviewed (journalists can't say this, because if people knew how boring politicians were they wouldn't read what we write), how dead the conversation feels, how bald, flat, uninteresting the message is.

As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the reasonableness of the person whom we ask it: who would expect discretion from a fool, candor from a tyrant, or justice from a villain?

There should be no relenting in our efforts to influence politics and politicians. But in the name of honesty and sanity we must recognize the limits of politics.

Adult infallibility, which seems to me to be an oxymoron, is a regrettable condition, a type of regression, a hardening of the arteries around the heart of ignorance. It frequently manifests itself in an irrational irascibility that is directed at an unspecified "they," who upon examination turn out to be politicians, professionals, or scientists who have challenged our comfortable assumptions about the world.

Spending is not caring. Spending is what politicians do instead of caring. Spending more does not guarantee success. Politicians like to measure spending because it is easier than measuring actual metrics of accomplishment.