Politics & Power Quote by Harry S. Truman

Strip away the marble and the motorcade, Truman insists, and the presidency looks less like command than persuasion. The jab lands because it’s anticlimactic: the job Americans mythologize as quasi-regal is reduced to something almost clerical - managing egos, dispensing praise, applying pressure, and keeping the machinery moving. “Glorified” does heavy lifting here. It concedes the office’s prestige while mocking how that prestige functions: not as inherent authority, but as a costume that helps a politician do what any decent foreman does on a factory floor - get people to show up and do the work.

The verb trio “flattering, kissing, and kicking” is Truman’s plainspoken music, a folksy escalator from soft to hard power. It implies a theory of governance rooted in human nature, not constitutional diagrams. People rarely comply because a rule exists; they comply because someone they fear, respect, or want approval from nudges them into line. The sting in “what they are supposed to do anyway” is aimed at bureaucrats, legislators, and allies who, in Truman’s view, need constant tending even when their duties are obvious. It’s an indictment of institutional inertia: the state doesn’t run on lofty mandates, it runs on relentless follow-up.

Context matters. Truman inherited WWII’s end, launched the Marshall Plan, recognized Israel, confronted labor unrest, and set the tone of Cold War containment - all while learning that “the buck stops here” doesn’t magically make others move. This quote is a realist’s corrective to hero-worship: the president can lead, but mostly by selling, cajoling, and occasionally forcing the already-necessary.