Politics & Power Quote by Max Lerner

Max Lerner’s line flatters power by measuring it in blowback. It’s not a civics-class metric of “achievements,” but a combat report: if a president is truly governing rather than managing, he will inevitably manufacture antagonists. The phrasing “hit his stride” is doing quiet work here. It implies an arc from tentative beginner to confident operator, and it normalizes conflict as the natural byproduct of competence, not a sign of dysfunction.

The subtext is a rebuke to a certain American craving for a frictionless presidency. Lerner, a journalist steeped in mass politics and the mid-century growth of the administrative state, knew that meaningful action collides with entrenched interests: party machines, business lobbies, ideological factions, even the bureaucracy. “Enemies” is a deliberately blunt word, collapsing disagreement into opposition, because in national politics policy isn’t just persuasion; it’s displacement. Someone loses status, money, or moral authority when a president succeeds.

There’s also a warning embedded in the bravado. Judging leaders by enemies can become a shortcut that rewards performative warfare: pick fights, stoke outrage, rack up villains. Lerner’s intent is sharper than that: not “conflict is good,” but “conflict is diagnostic.” A presidency without enemies may be a presidency without direction. Yet a presidency obsessed with enemies is often one that mistakes heat for traction. The line works because it captures that uncomfortable truth: impact is noisy, and silence can be its own indictment.