Politics & Power Quote by Bob Graham

Graham’s line is a politician’s way of naming a power spike without sounding accusatory: war doesn’t just reorder geopolitics, it reorganizes the domestic spotlight. By saying the president is “in a time of great attention,” he sidesteps the uglier verbs - exploiting, capitalizing, leveraging - while still pointing to the same dynamic. The phrase “clearly” does a lot of work. It’s a preemptive rebuttal to anyone insisting the surge is organic, personal, or deserved; Graham signals that this isn’t about presidential brilliance so much as the mechanics of crisis.

The doubled “war” matters, too. “As a result of the war” is the immediate cause: a country rallying around command, speed, and certainty. “The afterglow of the war” is the hangover benefit: the lingering aura of leadership that can outlive the battlefield facts, the policy failures, even the moral ambiguity. “Afterglow” is a soft, flattering word, and that softness is part of the critique. It implies warmth and radiance, as if war were a sunset instead of an injury.

Contextually, it fits the post-conflict pattern Americans have watched repeatedly: presidential approval and media oxygen concentrate during military action, then become political capital at home. Graham isn’t just describing attention; he’s warning about its distortions - how scrutiny narrows, dissent gets coded as disloyalty, and the executive branch temporarily becomes the nation’s default narrator.