Politics & Power Quote by John Kenneth Galbraith

The line lands like a compliment and detonates like an accusation. Calling a “short memory” admirable in politics is Galbraith’s deadpan way of naming the system’s most reliable lubricant: forgetting. Not forgiving, not reconciling, just moving on fast enough that yesterday’s failure can be repackaged as tomorrow’s plan.

As an economist, Galbraith understood that markets run on expectations; politics runs on narratives. A short memory is politically valuable because it reduces accountability costs. If voters and institutions truly kept score, the risk premium on public promises would skyrocket: fewer grand claims, less swagger, more tedious competence. Forgetting keeps the supply of confidence high. It also keeps demand for “new” ideas brisk, even when they’re old ideas in fresher fonts.

The subtext is cynicism with a policy wonk’s precision. Galbraith isn’t praising the public’s amnesia; he’s noting how power adapts to it. Scandals become “distractions,” wars become “complicated,” austerity becomes “necessary,” and yesterday’s architect of the problem returns as today’s sober fixer. Short memory isn’t a personal flaw so much as a structural feature of media cycles, electoral incentives, and the human preference for coherence over contradiction.

Context matters: Galbraith wrote and advised through eras when governments marketed prosperity, managed crises, and sold expertise. His quip implies that political success often depends less on being right than on surviving being wrong. In that world, remembrance is radical, and amnesia is bipartisan.