Politics & Power Quote by Rich Lowry

Lowry’s line lands like a compliment with a shiv inside it: Bill Clinton’s signature talent, he argues, wasn’t persuasion so much as performance so seamless it erased the seam. Calling it “fakery” frames Clinton not as a liar caught in episodes but as someone whose political self was built from practiced intimacy, moral flexibility, and that famously elastic empathy. The twist is the coda: “a kind of political genius.” Lowry isn’t absolving; he’s diagnosing the skill that modern politics rewards, where authenticity is less a fact than an effect.

The intent is double-edged. As an editor writing from a conservative vantage point, Lowry critiques Clinton’s character while conceding his effectiveness. That concession matters: it positions Clinton as the archetype of a new species of leader, one who can project sincerity without being anchored to sincerity’s constraints. The subtext isn’t only about Clinton; it’s about the voter’s complicity. If “impossible to tell” where the act ends, the audience becomes part of the act, choosing the version that feels good enough to govern.

Contextually, the line echoes the Clinton era’s defining drama: the collision between personal scandal and public competence, and the broader 1990s shift toward politics as media choreography. Lowry’s formulation anticipates a cynical 21st-century reality: the most successful politicians aren’t those with the purest “real self,” but those who can make the question of the real self irrelevant.