Politics & Power Quote by Gore Vidal

Vidal’s line lands like a legal clause written by a misanthrope: tidy, definitive, and meant to sting. The joke is structural. By using the bureaucratic language of “automatically” and “by definition,” he mimics the cold certainty of institutions he distrusts, then weaponizes that certainty against the most sanctified institution of all: the presidency. The wit is that he’s not merely insulting politicians; he’s indicting the personality type that wants the job.

The intent is anti-romantic. American culture sells the presidency as destiny for the best among us, a narrative of service, sacrifice, and “answering the call.” Vidal flips it: the very hunger to inhabit that myth is evidence of unfitness. Subtext: the office is an amplifier for ego, and anyone eager to step into the amplifier is already auditioning for self-regard, not stewardship. It’s not a claim that leaders are always corrupt; it’s a claim that the selection mechanism rewards the wrong appetites - ambition, performance, and a tolerance for unreality.

Context matters because Vidal wrote from a perch of patrician skepticism toward empire and spectacle. His America is not a fresh republic but a stage-managed “United States of Amnesia,” where campaigns are marketing campaigns and governance is downstream of money, media, and grievance. The line works because it compresses a whole theory of democratic failure into a paradox: in a system that requires candidates to beg for power, the healthiest relationship to power is to not crave it. The punchline is also the lament. If the job can only be won by those least suited to want it, the republic keeps hiring the problem it hopes to solve.