"There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S"
About this Quote
Polk’s line lands like a diary entry that accidentally became an indictment: not a soaring denunciation, but a weary discovery from someone who thought proximity to power would reveal competence and shared purpose. Coming from a sitting president, the sting isn’t that Congress is selfish - that was hardly news in 1840s America - but that the selfishness is worse than he imagined, and that “principle” isn’t even reliably there as a counterweight. He’s describing a legislature driven less by public commitments than by personal advantage, factional loyalty, and the transactional logic of patronage.
The specific intent is both personal and tactical. Polk is venting, but he’s also building a case for executive resolve: if Congress can’t be trusted to act from conviction, the president must force clarity, corral votes, and treat “principle” as a scarce resource. The subtext is a warning about governance itself: institutions are supposed to refine self-interest into policy; instead, he’s watching self-interest eat the institution.
Context matters. Polk governed at peak party discipline and sectional tension, while trying to deliver an aggressive agenda (tariff reduction, the Independent Treasury, Oregon, and war with Mexico). Every one of those goals ran through lawmakers whose incentives were local, electoral, and patronage-based. The quote captures a president learning that Congress isn’t an arena of elevated debate so much as a marketplace, where moral language is often packaging and “principle” is invoked when it’s useful, abandoned when it’s costly. That disillusionment is the point - and the weapon.
The specific intent is both personal and tactical. Polk is venting, but he’s also building a case for executive resolve: if Congress can’t be trusted to act from conviction, the president must force clarity, corral votes, and treat “principle” as a scarce resource. The subtext is a warning about governance itself: institutions are supposed to refine self-interest into policy; instead, he’s watching self-interest eat the institution.
Context matters. Polk governed at peak party discipline and sectional tension, while trying to deliver an aggressive agenda (tariff reduction, the Independent Treasury, Oregon, and war with Mexico). Every one of those goals ran through lawmakers whose incentives were local, electoral, and patronage-based. The quote captures a president learning that Congress isn’t an arena of elevated debate so much as a marketplace, where moral language is often packaging and “principle” is invoked when it’s useful, abandoned when it’s costly. That disillusionment is the point - and the weapon.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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