Politics & Power Quote by DeForest Soaries

A polite sentence that lands like an indictment: Washington, Soaries suggests, treats democracy as a foreign-policy accessory rather than a domestic obligation. The line’s power comes from its careful balance of bureaucratic restraint and moral accusation. “Very little interest” sounds almost technical, the kind of phrasing you’d use in a memo, but it’s a damning diagnosis when the subject is “true election reform.” He’s not alleging a single villain or scandal; he’s pointing to ambient indifference as the real antagonist.

The subtext is about misaligned incentives. Election reform is unglamorous, partisan in its consequences, and expensive in its execution. Politicians benefit from rules they already understand and can game; broadening participation introduces uncertainty. Soaries frames that reluctance not as a debate over policy details but as a failure of commitment across institutions: “neither the White House nor either house of the Congress.” That tri-part structure widens the charge from party politics to systemic inertia.

Then comes the sharpest turn: “as we seem to be in other countries.” It’s a quiet rebuke to America’s democracy-promotion posture abroad, where election monitoring and civic participation are treated as proof of legitimacy, even justification for intervention. By contrasting exportable ideals with domestic neglect, Soaries exposes hypocrisy without shouting. The context that shadows this critique is the early-2000s wave of election controversies and modernization debates, when “reform” often meant technical fixes while access and enfranchisement remained politically combustible. His intent is to force a basic question: if democratic participation isn’t urgent at home, what exactly are we championing overseas?