Politics & Power Quote by Robert Casey

The line lands like a confession from inside the machine: the closer you get to political power, the more you feel how little of it is actually yours. Casey frames “political power” as something people imagine as a lever, but anyone who tries to pull it for “the common good” discovers it’s wired into a maze of veto points, rival institutions, donors, party discipline, courts, bureaucratic drag, media cycles, and the hard physics of limited budgets. The “awful sense” matters. This isn’t mild frustration; it’s moral vertigo, the gap between the mandate you think you have and the reality you inherit.

Casey’s intent is both empathetic and tactical. He’s speaking to reformers and do-gooders who enter office expecting virtue to translate into outcomes. The subtext: if you’re sincere, you’ll be punished first by complexity, then by compromise, then by the suspicion that compromise is corruption. Notice the gendered “Any man” of his era, but also its rhetorical universality: it’s an invitation to solidarity among officeholders who want credit for caring even when results are thin.

Coming from a career politician in late-20th-century American governance, the quote also reads as a pre-emptive rebuttal to cynicism. It suggests the system can thwart good intentions without requiring bad actors. That’s a comforting message to insiders and a bracing one to outsiders: the scandal isn’t always malice; sometimes it’s impotence dressed up as authority.