Politics & Power Quote by James Bovard

Bovard’s line lands like an obituary for a civic norm most people never realized was keeping the whole structure upright. The phrasing does a lot of work: “entire generations” isn’t just complaint, it’s indictment. If multiple cohorts have “come of age” under a different set of expectations, then deception isn’t an aberration anymore; it’s the climate. Calling candor an “ancient time” is a deliberate sting, a way of making the reader feel how far the goalposts have moved, how quaint the idea now sounds that presidents owe the public the truth.

The key move is the reframing of presidential power. Bovard isn’t arguing that the presidency is too strong in a purely constitutional sense. He’s suggesting that power used to be socially and politically “constrained” by something squishier than law: the duty to tell citizens what was being done in their name. When that duty evaporates, the presidency doesn’t need new authorities; it can simply operate with less friction. Secrecy, euphemism, classified rationales, carefully managed “messaging” - these become force multipliers.

Subtext: Americans have been trained to accept a performance of transparency (briefings, talking points, curated leaks) as if it were the real thing. The quote fits a post-Watergate, post-Iraq, post-9/11 continuum where “trust us” replaces proof and where political survival often rewards tactical dishonesty. Bovard’s intent is to make cynicism feel less like sophistication and more like a policy failure: when candor dies, consent becomes theater.