Politics & Power Quote by Aleksander Kwasniewski

National pride tries to clear its throat here and ends up tripping over its own shoelaces. Kwasniewski is reaching for a simple presidential move: fold personal biography into national biography, then stamp it with progress. The phrase "as the President of Poland" is meant to launder the "I" into a collective "we", turning one man’s speech into a country’s verdict on itself. It’s the sound of a post-communist state eager to narrate its transformation in the most legible Western terms: different now, and not just different - "much better than before."

What makes the line work (and wobble) is the awkward tension between authenticity and performance. "We’re proud that I am coming from Poland" accidentally exposes the machinery of nation-branding: pride is supposed to be communal, but the sentence keeps snapping back to the speaker’s individual identity, as if the nation’s credibility still needs a human spokesperson to vouch for it abroad.

The subtext is Poland’s 1990s-into-2000s self-reintroduction: a country no longer defined by Soviet orbit, selling democratic legitimacy, market reforms, and EU-adjacent modernity through the rhetoric of improvement. "Much better than before" is deliberately unspecific, which is part of the strategy. Specifics invite debate; vibe invites applause. In its clumsy English, you can hear the stakes: not just pride, but reassurance - to outsiders and to Poles themselves - that the new Poland is real, and that its leader can speak it into being.