Politics & Power Quote by Chauncey Depew

A jab dressed up as a diagnosis, Depew's line lands because it flatters American self-image (orderly, constitutional, procedurally fair) while quietly accusing the country of letting technique outrank truth. Calling the United States "a lawyer's government" isn't just a demographic observation about officeholders with law degrees. It's a claim about the nation's operating system: legitimacy flows through briefs, clauses, precedents, committees, and courtrooms. The action is in the footnotes.

Depew, a Gilded Age politician with a flair for after-dinner aphorisms, is speaking from inside the machine. Late 19th-century America was awash in corporate consolidation, labor conflict, and political bargaining; law became the preferred instrument for settling disputes without openly admitting whose power was actually growing. "Always has been" retrofits inevitability onto a choice, turning a historically contingent elite culture into national destiny. That's the subtextual sleight of hand: if the country is inherently lawyer-run, then any frustration with slow, process-heavy governance can be dismissed as naive.

The line also hints at a deeper ambivalence. Lawyers are the priesthood of the republic: they translate messy public passions into permissible forms, protecting minority rights and restraining demagogues. But priesthoods guard their own authority. Depew's formulation suggests a politics where the sharpest weapon isn't persuasion but procedure, where winning often means out-arguing rather than out-visioning. It's praise and warning in one sentence: the rule of law, yes; the rule of lawyers, maybe not.