Politics & Power Quote by Pete du Pont

Du Pont is admiring Roosevelt while quietly warning you about the mechanics of power. He frames the New Deal not as a burst of benevolence, but as a case study in political leverage: crisis doesn’t just demand action, it supplies permission. The key verb here is "use" - a blunt acknowledgement that emergencies are not only problems to be solved but tools to be handled, timed, and translated into lasting ideology.

The intent is pragmatic, almost instructional. Du Pont isn’t describing leadership as moral clarity; he’s describing it as agenda-setting under pressure. "Changes in the way a nation thinks" is the tell. Policy, in this view, is downstream from psychology: the real prize is shifting what feels normal, what feels necessary, what feels possible. Crisis accelerates that shift by collapsing debate into urgency. People who would fight incremental reforms will tolerate structural ones if the alternative looks like chaos.

The subtext carries a politician’s cynicism: crises are narrative openings. You don’t merely respond; you define what the crisis means, then attach your preferred solutions to that definition. It also smuggles in a justification for aggressive governance - if the moment is dire enough, sweeping change becomes not overreach but responsibility.

Context matters because du Pont came from a pro-business, small-government Republican tradition that often opposed Roosevelt. Invoking FDR is therefore strategic: he borrows Roosevelt’s effectiveness while keeping a cool distance from Roosevelt’s ideology. It’s an argument about method, not endorsement - and a reminder that the most consequential reforms often arrive wearing the mask of emergency.