Politics & Power Quote by Martin Van Buren

Van Buren’s line is a polite warning with sharp teeth: democracy is loud, but governing can’t afford to be. “Temporary Excitement” isn’t just public enthusiasm; it’s panic, outrage, speculative bubbles, wartime fever, the kind of moral certainty that spreads faster than information. By pairing it against “Sober Second Thought,” he turns prudence into a civic virtue and impatience into a political hazard. The phrasing does a lot of work. “Excitement” sounds harmless, even fun, until you remember how easily excitement becomes a mob or a stampede. “Sober” borrows the language of self-control and addiction, implying the body politic can get drunk on its own passions.

The intent is fundamentally institutional. Van Buren isn’t asking citizens to feel less; he’s arguing that the state’s legitimacy depends on delay, procedure, and the cooling-off mechanisms built into American governance. It’s the logic behind checks and balances, bicameralism, vetoes, and the slow grind of lawmaking: time as a safeguard. That’s also the subtext: popular will is necessary but unreliable, and leaders are supposed to filter it, not mirror it.

Context matters because Van Buren governed in an era when mass politics was accelerating - Jacksonian democracy, partisan newspapers, rallies, and intense regional conflict. The young republic had already seen how quickly “excitement” could warp policy, from financial speculation to sectional flare-ups. His sentence tries to sanctify restraint at the precise moment restraint was becoming harder to sell. It’s a defense of governance as discipline, not performance.