Politics & Power Quote by John Buchanan Robinson

"It is often said" is doing more work than it seems. Robinson opens with a distancing move: he’s not endorsing the slogan, he’s pinning it to "reformers" and presenting it as a fashionable refrain. In late-19th and early-20th century politics, "run government like a business" was the calling card of efficiency crusaders - civil service reformers, municipal good-government leagues, Progressive-era managers - eager to replace patronage and mess with the old machine.

Robinson, a politician who lived inside that machine age, is telegraphing skepticism. The phrase "business principles" carries a deliberately fuzzy prestige: it sounds modern, rational, clean. It also smuggles in assumptions that don’t survive contact with public life. Businesses pick their customers, pursue measurable returns, and can abandon losers; governments inherit everyone, serve conflicting constituencies, and are judged by legitimacy as much as outcomes. Calling for "business principles" often means narrowing the definition of success to what can be counted, priced, and disciplined.

The subtext is a warning about category error and a quiet jab at reformers’ moral vanity. They frame themselves as practical adults, while implying politicians are sentimental or corrupt. Robinson’s line suggests the opposite: the slogan can be a convenient cudgel, less a plan than a posture. In an era when corporate power was rising and public trust in institutions was contested, he’s hinting that importing business logic into governance isn’t neutral technocracy - it’s politics, with winners and losers, dressed up as common sense.