Politics & Power Quote by Don Marquis

The jab lands because it treats the politician’s “idea” as a rare and vaguely dangerous event, like an eclipse you’re better off not staring at. Don Marquis frames political thought as accidental: not a steady practice of judgment, but an outbreak. The rhythm of the sentence does the rest. “Does get an idea” sets up a tiny concession (fine, yes, sometimes they think), only to snap into the punchline: “he usually gets it all wrong.” That “all” is doing cynical heavy lifting. Marquis isn’t accusing officials of partial error or muddled trade-offs; he’s accusing them of systemic misfire, of being wrong in the way a machine is wrong when it’s calibrated to the wrong purpose.

As a journalist writing in the early 20th century, Marquis is speaking from a moment when American politics was modernizing fast: party machines, patronage, Progressive reform, mass media, and the expanding administrative state. Public life was becoming more “expert” on paper, yet still deeply theatrical in practice. The quote’s subtext is that political incentives punish clarity and reward slogans. When politicians finally risk an “idea,” it has often been workshop-tested into nonsense by donors, factions, polls, or sheer ambition.

There’s also a sly democratic insult here: politicians aren’t uniquely stupid; they’re uniquely constrained. Marquis implies the office itself distorts thinking. The joke endures because it flatters the listener’s suspicion that policy failure isn’t bad luck - it’s baked into the job description.