Politics & Power Quote by Max Burns

The line is a politician’s humblebrag in plain clothes: a quick confession of inexperience that immediately reframes “novice” as a badge of entry into an oddly professionalized amateur league. Burns opens with a disarming plural - “We’re novices” - inviting solidarity and lowering expectations. Then comes the twist: the “friends” in the freshman class have already run for Congress “two and three times.” Freshman, in other words, is less about being new to politics than new to winning.

The intent is tactical. By foregrounding inexperience, Burns buys forgiveness for missteps and signals authenticity to voters tired of career-polished messaging. But he also smuggles in an argument about the system: today’s pipeline makes even first-term members veterans of campaigns, consultants, donor networks, and ideological sorting. You don’t stumble into Congress anymore; you audition repeatedly, often failing in public, until the timing or district lines cooperate.

There’s a quiet generational note, too. The freshman class is supposed to represent renewal, yet Burns suggests it’s populated by people who’ve been trying to get here for years. That’s not hypocrisy so much as a snapshot of modern ambition: persistence as credential, running as apprenticeship. The subtext is mildly self-critical and mildly awed - a recognition that political “experience” has shifted from governing to surviving the elective gauntlet.

Contextually, it reads like inside-baseball candor from someone still adapting to Washington: the kind of remark that reassures constituents (“I’m not a lifer”) while acknowledging that even the newcomers have been marinating in the machine.