Politics & Power Quote by Colin Powell

Bipartisanship, in Powell's framing, isn't a moral failure so much as a branding exercise that ignores how America is actually wired. He punctures the piety of "can't we all get along" politics by treating partisanship as a cultural inheritance: something learned early, reinforced socially, and rewarded institutionally. The line "It's nice" is doing quiet work here - a polite brush-off that reads like a seasoned operator declining to indulge a fantasy.

Powell's choice of "raised" is the tell. It shifts blame away from individual bad actors and toward civic upbringing: party as identity, not merely preference. That word also smuggles in inevitability. You don't just decide to stop being "raised" by something. The subtext is an argument against naïve proceduralism - the idea that if leaders simply behave better, the system will snap back to comity. Powell suggests the opposite: polarization isn't a glitch, it's the default setting.

Context matters because Powell was a figure who moved between tribes - a Republican with credibility in Washington's institutional class, later a critic of his party's direction. Coming from him, the remark reads less like partisan excuse-making and more like hard-earned diagnosis. It's also a warning to reformers: you can call for bipartisan cooperation all day, but unless you change the incentives and the social cues that "raise" citizens into partisan habits - media ecosystems, primary elections, donor networks, even the moral language of politics - you're asking adults to unlearn their native tongue.