Politics & Power Quote by Adlai E. Stevenson

Stevenson’s line lands like a courtroom objection dressed up as a cocktail-party quip: it’s funny because it’s almost polite. The “bargain” pretends to offer bipartisan reciprocity, then snaps shut on the punchline. Republicans, he implies, traffic in fabrication; Democrats, if they’re being “truthful,” have plenty of damaging material to work with. The wit isn’t ornamental. It’s a tactic that lets Stevenson indict the opposition without sounding like he’s whining about unfairness. He gets to accuse them of lying and reframe Democratic attacks as mere fact-reporting, all while borrowing the language of civility.

The subtext is a sly admission about American political theater: campaigns are not debates between two truth-tellers; they’re contests over whose story gets believed. By couching his jab as a trade, Stevenson signals that negative campaigning is a choice, not a natural disaster. He also smuggles in a moral hierarchy. If Republicans lie and Democrats tell the truth, then aggression from his side becomes righteous, even reluctant.

Context matters. Stevenson was the intellectual Democrat of the early Cold War era, twice the party’s presidential nominee, often cast as too refined for the rougher edges of mass politics. This line shows he knew exactly how rough it was. Rather than deny the mud, he weaponizes it with a joke that flatters his audience’s sophistication: you’re in on it, you can hear the logic click, and you can laugh while picking a side. In one sentence, he turns “both sides do it” into “we’re different,” without ever sounding sanctimonious.