Politics & Power Quote by Elliot Richardson

Ambition, in Richardson's telling, isn’t heroic; it’s prophylactic. He frames the State Department as "exciting" but immediately undercuts the romance with a fear that feels almost puritanical: staying in Washington too long could turn you into a "government hack". That last phrase does the heavy lifting. It’s not just a job description; it’s a moral category, a warning about what proximity to power can do to a person who stops thinking in terms of purpose and starts thinking in terms of process, access, and survival.

The subtext is a tension between service and self-preservation. Richardson isn’t rejecting public work so much as the gravitational pull of bureaucracy - the way institutions reward risk aversion, internal loyalty, and the soothing fiction that keeping the machine running is the same as doing good. "In the back of my mind" signals that this isn’t a polished career narrative but a persistent anxiety, the kind that shadows even "exciting" opportunities. He’s admitting that idealism can be quietly eroded by comfort and routine.

Context matters: Richardson belonged to a mid-century governing class that treated Washington as both calling and trap, especially during the Cold War expansion of the federal apparatus. His language suggests an era when "politics" could still be imagined as agency and public accountability, contrasted with the facelessness of administrative life. The irony is that he’s already thinking like a politician: defining himself against the despised insider, carving out a cleaner identity before the system can claim him.