Politics & Power Quote by Erich Leinsdorf

Power, in Leinsdorf's telling, is less a throne than a timetable. "A President doesn't have a terribly long time to talk to people who are not really on the agenda" lands with the dry bite of someone who has watched greatness up close and noticed how quickly it becomes logistics. The line isn't about rudeness; it's about triage. In the presidency, attention is the real currency, and the budget is always overspent.

Leinsdorf, a famed conductor who lived by rehearsal blocks and performance cues, hears politics like music: themes announced, motifs developed, dead air punished. The subtext is almost managerial: if you can't be placed in the program, you're noise. "Not really on the agenda" is doing the heavy lifting here, because it's not a moral category, it's an administrative one. People become agenda items or they become time leaks. That phrasing quietly demotes human encounters into workflow, which is precisely the point.

Read as celebrity observation, it doubles as a sideways confession about elite worlds generally. Presidents, like star soloists, are surrounded by gatekeepers and scripts; spontaneity is a luxury disguised as charm. The intent feels cautionary and faintly skeptical: don't mistake proximity for access, and don't confuse a brief audience with influence. Leinsdorf's line works because it refuses sentimentality. It shows how leadership can compress empathy into minutes, and how those minutes are pre-owned by priorities set elsewhere.