Faith & Spirit Quote by George McGovern

McGovern’s line is a rebuke disguised as civics. Calling politics “an act of faith” drags it out of the realm of pure strategy and into the realm of moral risk: you don’t just count votes, you bet on people. The phrasing is pointedly anti-cynical in a profession that often treats the public as a problem to be managed. Faith, here, isn’t piety; it’s the willingness to speak in full sentences, to make arguments rather than trigger instincts.

The subtext is a challenge to the consultant mind-set: if you assume voters are shallow, you’ll campaign shallowly, then govern shallowly, and then claim you were right about them all along. McGovern flips that loop. “Show some kind of confidence” reads like an indictment of politicians who perform contempt while asking for trust. He’s arguing that democracy isn’t only a mechanism; it’s a relationship, and relationships rot when one side is perpetually talked down to.

Context matters: McGovern is the Vietnam-era liberal who ran in 1972 on ending the war and expanding social programs, then got crushed by Nixon. After that loss, it would have been easy to conclude the public can’t handle moral complexity. This sentence refuses that convenient lesson. It’s also a quiet defense of his own political style: persuasion over manipulation, moral clarity over triangulation.

The line works because it’s both aspiration and self-interest. If democracy requires faith in the public’s capacity, politicians have to act like educators, not salespeople. And that’s a standard most campaigns would rather not be judged by.