Politics & Power Quote by Russell Baker

The joke lands because it refuses to grant Washington the dignity of a morality play. Baker’s simile yanks the reader out of pious language and into a world where everyone already knows the rules are dirty. If the Mafia suddenly claims it’s acting on behalf of churchgoing decency, you don’t debate the finer points of canon law; you laugh at the transparent cover story. That’s Baker’s intent: to puncture sanctimony and force an admission that “morals” can be a convenient weapon in a power struggle rather than a principle.

The subtext is cynicism with a purpose. He’s not defending a president’s misconduct so much as indicting the accusers’ claimed purity. “A group of politicians” reads like a neutral civic body, but Baker swaps in “the Mafia” to argue that corruption isn’t an aberration in the system; it’s often its operating condition. The “Godfather” detail matters, too: this isn’t about small-time hypocrisy, it’s about an organization that runs on loyalty, leverage, and mutually assured destruction. Dumping the boss for failing at performative virtue (“not going to church on Sunday”) is a perfect parody of selective outrage: the problem isn’t the crimes, it’s the optics.

Contextually, Baker is writing in a late-20th-century America where impeachment talk, televised scandal, and moral crusades became political currency. His line anticipates a cycle that keeps repeating: elites laundering partisan aims through ethics, and the public being asked to treat tactical condemnation as civic purification. The wit isn’t decoration; it’s a scalpel aimed at the alibi.