Politics & Power Quote by Adlai E. Stevenson

Stevenson’s line lands like a slap precisely because it drags the sacred down to the fluorescent aisle. “Merchandise candidates… like breakfast cereal” isn’t just a cute metaphor; it’s an accusation that modern politics has traded deliberation for branding. Cereal is engineered to be chosen quickly: bright box, simple promise, a mascot you half-trust. Stevenson implies candidates are being packaged the same way, stripped of complexity so they can move off the shelf.

The “box tops” detail sharpens the insult. Box tops are the lowest form of civic participation: snip, mail, redeem. In that image, voting becomes a loyalty program, not an act of judgment. He’s not only warning about advertising; he’s diagnosing a relationship shift where citizens are treated as consumers to be harvested, not participants to be persuaded. The phrase “gather votes” sounds deliberately agricultural, suggesting campaigns that collect people the way corporations collect data.

Calling it the “ultimate indignity” frames this as a moral offense, not a tactical misstep. Stevenson, a mid-century Democrat who repeatedly ran for president in the age when television and mass-market PR were remaking public life, is pushing back against the early architecture of candidate-as-product politics. The subtext is patrician but pointed: democracy demands argument, accountability, and time. Turn it into a marketplace of slogans and premiums, and you don’t just cheapen the candidate - you degrade the voter.