Politics & Power Quote by James Reston

Democracy’s dirtiest secret isn’t corruption; it’s inertia. Reston’s line lands because it flips the comforting story we tell about politics as a grand contest of ideas. He’s arguing that power doesn’t primarily flow from persuasion or even popularity, but from asymmetry: a motivated minority will always beat a distracted majority. The sentence is engineered to sting. “All politics” is an overreach on purpose, a newsroom veteran’s absolutism meant to jolt readers out of civics-class optimism. “Indifference” is the key word, colder than “ignorance” and more damning than “apathy.” It suggests not a lack of information but a choice: people decide most issues are not worth the psychic cost.

The subtext is less cynical than diagnostic. Reston spent decades watching how elections, committees, and crises actually move: not through broad public consensus, but through narrow pressure, timing, and attention. Politics becomes the art of managing attention deficits. If the majority is indifferent most of the time, politicians rationally optimize for those who aren’t: donors, party activists, organized lobbies, primary voters, and media gatekeepers. That’s not a conspiracy; it’s an incentive structure.

Context matters: Reston came of age amid mid-century mass media and Cold War governance, when foreign policy and bureaucracy often ran ahead of public understanding. His line anticipates today’s “outrage cycle” too: bursts of intense engagement surrounded by long stretches of disengagement. The real warning isn’t that citizens are bad; it’s that indifference is a political resource, and someone will spend it.