Leadership Quote by Martin Van Buren

Van Buren is basically drawing a line between two kinds of political power: the back room and the crowd. He flatters neither. “Gaining over chiefs” is framed as mere “intrigue,” a word that makes elite dealmaking sound small-bore, even a little cowardly. It can win you a policy, a post, a moment. It can’t remake the weather. The real engine of history, he argues, is mass energy - “exciting the multitude” - and he’s blunt about what that requires: not just persuasion, but ignition.

The subtext is less romantic than it first appears. “Exciting” doesn’t mean educating; it means activating emotion and identity at scale. That’s a hard-nosed admission from a president whose era saw the rise of organized parties, mass rallies, and a rapidly expanding electorate for white men. Jacksonian democracy didn’t simply broaden participation; it professionalized mobilization. Van Buren, an architect of modern party machinery, is describing the mechanism he helped refine while giving it the sheen of destiny: elite bargaining yields “secondary results,” while popular fervor is “genius.”

There’s also a warning embedded in the praise. If world-changing leaders need the multitude, then the multitude can be moved, for better or worse, by whoever can supply a story loud enough to be felt. Van Buren is legitimizing democratic power while quietly admitting its volatility: history doesn’t turn on who you know; it turns on what you can make millions believe at once.