Politics & Power Quote by Paul Tsongas

Tsongas opens with identity as a binding agent: "You are Americans". It is less a description than a claim of membership, the kind of verbal flag-pin a candidate uses to collapse difference into a single, emotionally charged category. The next line - "You love this country" - quietly turns patriotism into a presumption, making dissent or skepticism feel like a personal defect rather than a political position. It is invitation and trap at once: agree, and you are inside the moral circle; hesitate, and you risk sounding un-American.

The pivot is "Together we are entrusted..". which borrows the language of stewardship. Voters are not just choosing a platform; they are guardians of an inheritance. That framing elevates the election beyond policy disputes into a quasi-civic sacrament, shifting responsibility from politicians to the public. It is shrewd: if the "principles" are endangered, the blame can be shared, and the urgency intensifies.

Calling those principles "mankind's greatest political and social achievement" is classic American exceptionalism, but with a purpose beyond chest-thumping. In the post-Cold War, late-20th-century moment Tsongas inhabited - when democracy was marketed as history's endpoint and America as its proof - this rhetoric reassured anxious voters that their everyday choices participated in something planetary. The subtext: our system is fragile, precious, and morally superior, so unity is not just desirable, it's required.