"Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time"
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Power, Forbes suggests, is a rental agreement with ruthless terms: miss a payment and you’re out. The line is clipped to the point of sounding unfinished, which is part of its bite. By leaving out the word “win” (“won’t win the next time”), Forbes turns electoral loss into something more absolute, almost fated. Forgetfulness isn’t a quaint human flaw here; it’s political malpractice.
As a publisher-businessman, Forbes is speaking from a world that prizes market feedback and punishes complacency. He frames democracy like a recurring transaction: leaders are “elected” once, but their legitimacy expires unless renewed. The implied offender is the officeholder who starts treating victory as proof of personal greatness rather than a temporary coalition of interests, compromises, and favors assembled at a specific moment in history. “How they got there” is a loaded phrase. It can mean grassroots labor, party machinery, donor money, local organizers, public anger, a crisis that elevated them, or sheer luck. Forbes refuses to sanitize it into inspiring civics; he hints that power is often acquired through messy, transactional realities that leaders later try to distance themselves from.
The subtext is a warning about hubris, but also about memory as strategy. Successful politicians remember the conditions that made them acceptable: the promises, the enemies, the cultural mood, the people who opened doors. Forget that, and you start governing for the mirror, not the map. The electorate, like a market, doesn’t care what you meant. It cares what you delivered and who you stayed loyal to.
As a publisher-businessman, Forbes is speaking from a world that prizes market feedback and punishes complacency. He frames democracy like a recurring transaction: leaders are “elected” once, but their legitimacy expires unless renewed. The implied offender is the officeholder who starts treating victory as proof of personal greatness rather than a temporary coalition of interests, compromises, and favors assembled at a specific moment in history. “How they got there” is a loaded phrase. It can mean grassroots labor, party machinery, donor money, local organizers, public anger, a crisis that elevated them, or sheer luck. Forbes refuses to sanitize it into inspiring civics; he hints that power is often acquired through messy, transactional realities that leaders later try to distance themselves from.
The subtext is a warning about hubris, but also about memory as strategy. Successful politicians remember the conditions that made them acceptable: the promises, the enemies, the cultural mood, the people who opened doors. Forget that, and you start governing for the mirror, not the map. The electorate, like a market, doesn’t care what you meant. It cares what you delivered and who you stayed loyal to.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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