Time & Perspective Quote by Jon Huntsman, Jr.

Huntsman’s line is a politician’s version of killing the myth without killing the audience’s hope. Calling politics “a lot of serendipity” flatters the democratic fantasy that anyone can break through, then quietly narrows it: you need the right place, right time, right message. That triple “right” turns chance into a checklist, implying that success isn’t just about virtue or competence but about alignment with a moment that voters are ready to hear. It’s modest on the surface, strategic underneath.

The hedging syntax does real work. “And it either connects for you or, or it doesn’t” performs humility and realism in the same breath. The stuttered “or, or” reads like someone backing away from sounding too deterministic. It also preempts blame. If a campaign fails, it’s not necessarily a bad candidate, a bad platform, or a bad strategy; sometimes the wiring just doesn’t catch. That’s a useful alibi in a profession obsessed with postmortems.

Context matters: Huntsman has been a competent, bilingual, résumé-heavy figure who never quite became a national mood. As governor, diplomat, and would-be presidential contender, he embodied the kind of meritocratic preparedness that modern campaigns claim to reward. This quote reframes that mismatch: politics isn’t a pure merit contest; it’s an arena where timing can outrank qualifications. The subtext is a warning to consultants and commentators who pretend elections are fully engineerable, and a gentle reminder to voters that “connection” is its own power - irrational, emotional, and often decisive.