Politics & Power Quote by Rick Mercer

A toast that lands like a compliment, then curdles into a warning. Mercer’s line borrows the cheery ritual of civic optimism - “Here’s to democracy” - and then yanks the tablecloth: “May we get the government we deserve.” The joke works because it refuses the comforting story that politics is something done to us by faceless elites. It treats democracy as a mirror, not a shield.

The specific intent is accountability disguised as celebration. Mercer isn’t praising the system so much as testing the audience’s self-image. “Deserve” is the barb: it suggests voters aren’t merely victims of bad leadership but co-authors of it, through apathy, tribalism, short memories, and the quiet permission slip of low expectations. The line flatters no one. If you laugh, you’re admitting the possibility that you’re implicated.

The subtext is distinctly Canadian in its delivery - genial, polite, then razor-sharp. Mercer’s comedic persona often plays the affable guide who translates national politics into something you can feel in your gut. This quote does that in miniature: it sounds like a civic pat on the back, but it’s really a dare to take democracy seriously enough to be embarrassed by what you tolerate.

Context matters: Mercer rose alongside a media era where politics became both spectacle and background noise. In that environment, “the government we deserve” reads less like fate and more like an invoice. Democracy, he implies, doesn’t fail dramatically; it erodes by consent, one shrugged-off headline at a time.