Politics & Power Quote by George Stephanopoulos

Stephanopoulos is smuggling a reality check into a punchline: the presidency doesn’t just age you, it metabolizes you. By borrowing the dog-years gag, he takes an abstract idea - “politics is stressful” - and turns it into a vivid, slightly cruel measurement. It lands because it’s the kind of joke insiders use when the official story (historic honor, noble service) can’t contain the daily grind: sleep debt, permanent crisis posture, and the psychic cost of being watched, judged, and second-guessed in real time.

The line also does cultural work. It reframes the White House less as a mansion and more as a pressure cooker, where time is distorted and stakes are inflated. “Four years” and “two campaigns” are presented as twin marathons, reminding you that modern governance is inseparable from modern performance. Campaigning isn’t an on-ramp to the job; it’s a second job that never really ends. The subtext is that the office has been redesigned by media cycles, donor demands, and partisan warfare into a machine that consumes not just policy bandwidth but human bandwidth.

Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton aide turned TV fixture, speaks from a hybrid vantage point: part participant, part narrator. The joke protects him from sounding sanctimonious while still signaling authority. It’s also a soft critique aimed at viewers who treat politics like episodic entertainment: sure, it’s a spectacle, but someone is paying for it in years.