Politics & Power Quote by Theodore White

White turns plumbing into political theory and, in the process, exposes how ideology often mistakes metaphors for mechanics. His “water” is the shorthand American journalism loves: resources, benefits, opportunity, public goods. The liberal, in his framing, is the optimist-technocrat who thinks policy can reverse gravity itself - that enough legislation, expertise, and moral urgency can make stubborn realities yield. It’s a jab at utopian planning, but also at the liberal habit of treating politics as engineering: if the design is clever enough, the laws of motion will cooperate.

The conservative, meanwhile, isn’t cast as a villain so much as an accountant with a moral theory. “Everybody should pay for his water” collapses a whole worldview into one sentence: responsibility as fairness, payment as proof of virtue, the market as the only neutral referee. White needles the punitive edge in that posture: if water is life, insisting on payment isn’t just prudence; it’s an ideological willingness to let thirst teach lessons.

Then he lands his real position with the slyness of a working reporter: reject both fantasy and moralizing. “Water should be free” signals a social-democratic instinct for baseline provision, while “water flows downhill” insists on constraints, tradeoffs, and incentives. Coming from a mid-century journalist who watched New Deal ambition, postwar prosperity, and Cold War realism collide, the line reads as a plea for grown-up politics: guarantee the essentials, but don’t pretend you can repeal gravity, human nature, or budgets.