Politics & Power Quote by Christian Nestell Bovee

Merit, in Bovee's telling, is less a ladder than a bullseye. The line works because it flips a civic bedtime story - that competence gets recognized and elevated - into a tactical warning: visibility is the real prize politics hands out, and visibility attracts violence. The simile "like a target" is doing the heavy lifting. A target is raised not to be admired but to be hit; "to be fired at" turns public service into a shooting gallery where opponents, rivals, and even allies take their aim.

The subtext is a grim, almost mechanistic view of political ecosystems. Politics doesn't merely fail to protect merit; it weaponizes it. The more capable you are, the more your actions become legible, your record becomes attackable, your motives become suspect. Bovee isn't praising modesty so much as diagnosing incentives: mediocrity can hide in the crowd, while excellence becomes a clean silhouette against the sky.

Context matters. Bovee wrote in 19th-century America, an era shaped by patronage, factional newspapers, and the spoils system - where advancement often meant stepping into a public brawl disguised as principle. Even today the line feels prescient: the higher you rise, the more your past becomes opposition research and your competence becomes "elitism". It's cynicism with a purpose, less despair than instruction: in politics, success isn't just achievement; it's exposure, and exposure is an invitation to be contested.