Politics & Power Quote by Claude Pepper

Pepper’s line lands because it punctures the most common delusion in democratic life: the slide from temporary hire to divine right. “Appointed” is bureaucratic and removable; it smells like paperwork, process, and the unglamorous reality that power is loaned out by institutions and voters. “Anointed” is oily with ritual. It implies sanctity, destiny, exemption from criticism. The sentence works as a neat moral trap: the moment a public servant starts talking like a savior, they’ve already forgotten who their boss is.

The subtext is a warning about entitlement disguised as leadership. Pepper isn’t only scolding vanity; he’s flagging what happens next when politicians feel “anointed”: they stop listening, start punishing dissent, treat oversight as heresy, and confuse the machinery of governance with a personal brand. It’s also a jab at the theatrical side of politics, where rallies, flag-draped staging, and messianic rhetoric can turn an elected office into something closer to a coronation.

Context matters. Pepper, a long-serving Florida senator and New Deal liberal, lived through eras when charisma and crisis could inflate leaders into symbols: the Depression, World War II, the Cold War, then television’s transformation of politics into performance. His quip is old-school institutionalism fighting back. It defends the idea that legitimacy comes from consent and procedure, not from the myth that any one figure is uniquely chosen. The irony is that democracies require a little self-belief to govern, but Pepper draws a hard line: confidence is useful; consecration is dangerous.