Politics & Power Quote by Malcolm Forbes

Forbes lands the jab with a publisher’s instinct for clean copy: politics isn’t a balance sheet, and confusing the two is how democracies get cheapened. The line pretends to be a mild warning about “few businessmen,” but the real target is a recurring American fantasy that managerial swagger equals civic competence. He frames business as a culture of decisive control and measurable outcomes, then sets it against democracy’s messier premise: legitimacy comes from consent, not efficiency. The insult isn’t that executives are stupid; it’s that their training rewards the wrong virtues.

The phrase “tolerance” is doing heavy lifting. In commerce, impatience can be a competitive edge. In a pluralistic system, impatience becomes contempt for opposition, for procedure, for minorities, for the slow churn of compromise. “Depth” is equally pointed: business prizes optimization, politics demands a thicker moral imagination - not just what works, but what’s fair, what’s durable, what people will accept as just. Forbes is warning that a CEO’s confidence can translate into an anti-democratic instinct: if the public won’t buy your plan, maybe the public is the problem.

Context matters because Malcolm Forbes wasn’t an outsider throwing stones. As the face of a business media empire, he benefited from capitalism’s glamor and had access to power. That makes the quote less populist than prophylactic: a reminder, from inside the club, that democratic governance is not a hostile takeover. When politics gets treated like a firm to be “run,” citizens become employees or customers - and neither role includes sovereignty.