Politics & Power Quote by Barbara Jordan

Governing, Barbara Jordan insists, is never just a set of procedures; it is a moral portrait we draw of one another and then try to enforce at scale. The line reads like a civics lesson, but its real edge is accusatory: if your policies are cruel, it is because your underlying view of people is small. If your institutions are fair, it is because you believe people are worth the trouble of fairness.

Jordan’s phrasing is strategic. “Derived” makes government a downstream consequence, not an autonomous machine. That flips the usual Washington alibi on its head: leaders can’t hide behind bureaucracy or “the system” when the system reflects choices about who counts, who is trusted, and who is suspected. “National conscience” is doing heavy work, too. She’s not appealing to partisan platforms; she’s invoking a shared American self-image - the story the country tells about liberty, dignity, equal citizenship - and warning that governance that contradicts it is not merely ineffective but illegitimate.

The context matters: Jordan’s public voice was forged in moments when the nation’s ethics were on trial - Watergate, constitutional debate, civil rights, and the slow work of expanding “we the people” to match the words on the page. As a Black woman in power, she understood how often governance reveals a degraded view of certain citizens. Her intent is both unifying and corrective: if we truly believe the democratic myth we cherish, then our laws, enforcement, and public investments must stop treating humanity as a problem to be managed and start treating it as the premise of the republic.