Politics & Power Quote by John Spratt

A veteran lawmaker leaning on "by my reckoning" is doing more than greeting a roomful of students; he is quietly claiming jurisdiction over time itself. John Spratt frames youth not as a demographic, but as a moral credential: if you are "young" (as he defines it), you are entitled to worry, to question, to dissent. That move matters because it converts anxiety from a private feeling into a civic right, and it does so without sounding radical. "Concerned" is the safe word that smuggles in a sharper charge: the government is on the wrong course.

The phrase "our government, the Federal Government" is a tell. It's a doubling that implies ownership and distance at once. Spratt is affirming national belonging while underlining that the machinery in Washington has become its own actor, potentially unmoored from the public it serves. Naming "President Bush" anchors the critique to executive power, not some vague "politics these days". In the Bush-era context - post-9/11 expansions of surveillance, war-making authority, and a broad theory of the unitary executive - "course" reads like a euphemism for drift toward overreach.

His intent is recruitment: he isn't merely validating youthful apprehension, he's licensing it. The subtext to older listeners is just as pointed: if even the kids are alarmed, the problem is structural, not partisan sniping. Spratt's rhetorical restraint is strategic; he keeps his language moderate so the alarm sounds credible.