Politics & Power Quote by Lewis H. Lapham

A whole ideology hides inside this line, disguised as a market report. By phrasing government as a commodity with a “supply” that can outpace “demand,” Lewis H. Lapham borrows the cold authority of economics to mock a very American habit: treating politics like a consumer preference rather than a collective obligation. The wit lands because it flips a familiar conservative complaint (big government) into the language of capitalism, the very system often invoked to discipline government. If the market is supposed to be self-correcting, why does the “product” keep multiplying?

The subtext is less about budgets than about appetite. Lapham’s jab assumes the state doesn’t simply expand from necessity; it grows because institutions reward growth, because crises are useful, because bureaucracy reproduces itself with the quiet efficiency of any monopoly. “Exceeds demand” suggests a mismatch between what people think they want (freedom from interference) and what they tolerate, even invite, when security, convenience, or moral panic is on offer. It’s not that citizens never demand government. It’s that they deny their own demand by outsourcing it to fear, philanthropy, or partisan symbolism.

Context matters: Lapham, long associated with a patrician, skeptical editorial sensibility, aims his cynicism at both managerial liberalism and right-wing theatrics. The line doesn’t flatter anti-government purists; it teases them. If government is “oversupplied,” the public has been shopping with its eyes closed.