Time & Perspective Quote by George J. Mitchell

Power doesn’t just want your vote; it wants your reverence. Mitchell’s line is a cool, prosecutorly description of a familiar maneuver: leaders borrow the emotional armor of religion and patriotism to make their agendas feel not merely preferable, but sacred. If policy can be framed as faith or flag, disagreement stops being a debate and starts looking like heresy or disloyalty. That’s the “insulating themselves from any criticism” part: criticism becomes socially costly, even morally suspect.

The intent is less to sneer at belief or national pride than to warn how easily they’re weaponized. “Imbue themselves” matters. He’s not saying politicians are automatically religious or patriotic; he’s saying they adopt the attributes - the language, imagery, rituals, and certainty - because those symbols come preloaded with trust. It’s branding, but with a halo. Once a leader wraps a policy in sanctified identity, the audience is nudged into an emotional posture: solidarity over scrutiny, unity over nuance.

Contextually, Mitchell isn’t a fringe bomb-thrower. As a U.S. Senate Majority Leader and later a key Northern Ireland peace broker, he worked in environments where identity politics can turn lethal and where rhetorical escalation has real consequences. That background gives the quote its restrained urgency: a reminder that democratic legitimacy depends on criticism, and that the quickest way to corrode it is to make criticism feel like sin.