Politics & Power Quote by Harold Ford

Ford’s line is a small master class in Washington candor: he acknowledges the obvious mechanics of electoral theater while indicting its emotional manipulation. The first sentence is clinical, almost bored. Conventions produce a “bounce” the way fireworks produce smoke; it’s predictable, measurable, and temporary. By naming it upfront, he strips the GOP’s post-convention momentum of mystique and recasts it as stagecraft rather than mandate.

Then he sharpens the blade. “Wrapping themselves in the 9/11 flag” is deliberately tactile, an image of fabric used as costume. It frames patriotism not as conviction but as wardrobe, suggesting a party seeking moral insulation by draping itself in collective trauma. The choice of 9/11 matters: it’s the rare American event that still carries near-sacred consensus, which makes it uniquely powerful as political cover and uniquely distasteful as a prop. Ford’s “inappropriate in many ways” is doing strategic work, too. He doesn’t litigate every “way” because the audience can supply them: exploiting grief, blurring mourning with campaigning, implying dissent is disloyal.

The closing clause, “but it’s their choice,” is the politician’s scalpel disguised as politeness. He’s signaling restraint and respect for democratic competition while quietly hanging responsibility around their necks. Subtext: you’re allowed to do this, but you shouldn’t need to. Contextually, it lands in the post-9/11 era when national security rhetoric was a partisan accelerant; Ford is warning that the bounce may be real, but the moral cost is, too.