Politics & Power Quote by Peggy Noonan

Romance is the wrong genre for politics, and Noonan knows it. The line lands because it treats voter infatuation as a kind of emotional category error: we keep auditioning politicians for the role of savior, soulmate, or moral avatar, then act surprised when the relationship turns transactional. By framing support as "fall[ing] in love", she’s not just warning against naivete; she’s diagnosing a recurring civic addiction to charisma.

The bite is in the absolutes. "All" and "just are" flatten ideology, personality, and party into a single inevitability: disappointment isn’t a scandal, it’s a job description. That blunt fatalism reads like a preemptive exhale after decades of campaign narratives built on purity and redemption. Politicians can’t help it because the incentives don’t let them. Winning requires performance, coalition requires compromise, governing requires trade-offs, and the public’s attention economy rewards dramatic certainty over slow competence. Even the decent ones disappoint because the system converts intention into negotiation.

Noonan’s conservative sensibility sits in the background: a suspicion of messianic politics and a preference for lowered expectations, institutions, and limits. The subtext isn’t apathy; it’s emotional hygiene. Admire a policy, back a coalition, demand accountability - but don’t confuse representation with intimacy. Once you stop seeking love, you’re freer to ask for something more realistic and more democratic: results, restraint, and the humility to accept that politics is where imperfect humans manage conflict, not where they resolve it.