Politics & Power Quote by Martin Sheen

Sheen’s line is a small masterclass in disarming the audience before he makes the real ask. By leading with “we are not trying to get people to eat their vegetables,” he rejects the scolding tone that turns civic engagement into a chore. Then he swats away the predictable partisan suspicion - “we are not trying to get people to become Democrats” - which, in the context of an actor famous for playing an idealistic Democratic president, is both self-aware and strategic. He knows the easy cynic’s read: Hollywood preaching. So he preemptively lowers the defenses.

The intent is less about policy and more about permission. Sheen is arguing that political life shouldn’t feel like a gated community for people with money, connections, and professional fluency. The key subtext sits in the phrase “so that politics isn’t left to the wealthy and privileged”: he’s not promising a better outcome, he’s warning about what happens when everyone else opts out. It’s a framing that turns apathy into complicity without calling anyone a bad person.

The context matters: this is an actor speaking “on the show,” likely with The West Wing in the background, a series that romanticized competence and public service at a time when trust in government was fraying. Sheen isn’t claiming the show converts viewers; he’s claiming it can normalize participation - voting, volunteering, paying attention - as something ordinary people do, not just something done to them by elites. That’s the pitch: civic life as shared ownership, not moral homework.