Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard V. Allen

Power in Washington rarely announces itself as raw patronage; it dresses up as “logic.” Richard V. Allen’s line does that costume-change in real time. The phrasing turns a political choice into an inevitability: “will rely in the first instance on its friends” sounds like prudent triage, a government reaching for trusted hands. Then comes the clincher, a moral algebra masquerading as common sense: it would be “illogical and counterproductive to reward its adversaries.” The word “reward” is doing heavy lifting, quietly reframing participation in governance not as representation or competence but as a prize handed out for loyalty.

Allen, a public servant speaking from inside the machinery, telegraphs the early operating system of the Bush Administration: coalition management as discipline. Friends get access, influence, and appointments; adversaries get frozen out, not because they’re wrong on the merits but because inclusion itself is treated as an incentive structure. It’s the bureaucratic version of “don’t feed the trolls,” except the stakes are agencies and national policy.

The subtext is a warning wrapped in reassurance. To supporters, it promises recognition and proximity: your investment in us will be repaid. To opponents, it signals that disagreement has a cost beyond losing an election; it can mean exclusion from the table where the next agenda gets built. The rhetoric is clean, almost managerial, but the consequence is tribal: governance becomes a loyalty economy, and “counterproductive” starts to mean “insufficiently aligned.”