"Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good"
About this Quote
Fascinating, Will suggests, not because politicians are noble but because they are a walking contradiction: the people we elevate to power are often rewarded for being safely ordinary. The sting is in that phrase "elite that accomplishes mediocrity" - a neat reversal of meritocratic mythology. In democracies, politicians are selected by competitive systems, surrounded by credentialed staff, and granted immense visibility. Yet their highest professional skill can be the production of outcomes that are deliberately modest: incremental bills, ambiguous promises, bipartisan mush, symbolic gestures that avoid catastrophic risk.
The intent is less to sneer at incompetence than to diagnose a job description. Public office isn't a seminar in brilliance; it's an endurance sport in constraint. Voters punish volatility, institutions slow everything down, and interest groups tug policy toward the plausible, not the visionary. "For the public good" is the shiv hidden in the compliment: mediocrity can be stabilizing, even protective, when the alternative is ideological overreach or charismatic disaster. Will is pointing at the uncomfortable truth that a democracy often prefers the manager to the genius.
Context matters: as a long-running conservative journalist shaped by post-Watergate skepticism and late-20th-century gridlock, Will is attuned to the gap between civic romance and procedural reality. The subtext is a warning to citizens who demand greatness on demand: the system is built to filter extremes and launder ambition into compromise. Politicians "fascinate" because they mirror us - our appetite for elite leadership, and our insistence that it remain safely, reassuringly average.
The intent is less to sneer at incompetence than to diagnose a job description. Public office isn't a seminar in brilliance; it's an endurance sport in constraint. Voters punish volatility, institutions slow everything down, and interest groups tug policy toward the plausible, not the visionary. "For the public good" is the shiv hidden in the compliment: mediocrity can be stabilizing, even protective, when the alternative is ideological overreach or charismatic disaster. Will is pointing at the uncomfortable truth that a democracy often prefers the manager to the genius.
Context matters: as a long-running conservative journalist shaped by post-Watergate skepticism and late-20th-century gridlock, Will is attuned to the gap between civic romance and procedural reality. The subtext is a warning to citizens who demand greatness on demand: the system is built to filter extremes and launder ambition into compromise. Politicians "fascinate" because they mirror us - our appetite for elite leadership, and our insistence that it remain safely, reassuringly average.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
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