Quotes About Politics

a striking example of political gaucheness, Adams then nominated Washington to command the new army before he had a chance to register an opinion. On July 3, the Senate hastily approved the choice.

With John Adams certain to run strongly in New England and Thomas Jefferson equally so in the south, the election would hinge on pivotal votes in the mid-Atlantic states, particularly New York, which had twelve electoral votes.

This was Alexander Hamilton's recurring nightmare: an electoral deal struck between Virginia and New York Republicans.

When it suited his convenience, Jefferson set aside his small-government credo with compunction.

By midnight on May 1, 1800, the local political world learned the result of this fierce election, one that portended a fundamental realignment in American politics: the Republican slate had swept New York City, converting Hamilton's own home turf from a Federalist to a Republican stronghold. This meant that Jefferson could now count on twelve electoral votes where he had received none in 1796.

On March 4, 1793, George Washington was sworn in for his second term as president

Fisher Ames, always a shrewd observer of the scene, mused that "a spirit of faction . . . must soon come to a crisis." He foresaw that congressional Republicans would discard their comparatively decorous criticism of Washington's first term:

In writing an intemperate indictment of John Adams, Hamilton committed a form of political suicide that blighted the rest of his career. As shown with "The Reynolds Pamphlet," he had a genius for the self-inflicted wound and was capable of marching blindly off a cliff—traits most pronounced in the late 1790s. Gouverneur Morris once commented that one of Hamilton's chief characteristics was "the pertinacious adherence to opinions he had once formed.

It also reflected a profound political logic. Hamilton knew that bondholders would feel a stake in preserving any government that owed them money. If the federal government, not the states, was owed the money, creditors would shift their main allegiance to the central government.

Machiavellian

liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power. . . . [T]he former rather than the latter is apparently most to be apprehended by the United States.

Hamilton induced Philip Schuyler to renege on his pledged support for Duane in favor of King.

A sinking fund is a repository, set up apart from the general budget, for revenues to pay off debt.) It would sequester revenues from the sudden whims of grasping politicians who might want to raid the Treasury for short-term gain. The sinking fund would retire about 5 percent of the debt each year until it was paid off.

With finely honed political instincts, George Clinton saw that Hamilton was overreaching, and he secretly aided King's candidacy in order to drive a wedge between the Schuylers and the Livingstons. When New York picked its second senator on July 16, 1789, Rufus King came out on top. Just as Clinton suspected, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston was irate and gradually moved into the governor's camp.

Both Hamilton and Madison were rational men who assumed that people often acted irrationally because of ambition and avarice. Madison wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

We realized that public sentiment would be against us if we actually refined all the oil.

In recoiling from its own extremist past, Germany inadvertently became the host of a new totalitarian movement.

There's a lot of tension right now between Russia and the Ukraine.

You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies? Small government would kill them dead.

They were Ukrainians," I said. "Is there a difference?" "I'm sure the Ukrainians think so. The Russians put their minorities out front, and their minorities didn't like it.

realpolitik

not how Washington works. Nobody washes their dirty linen in public. So you need some other outsider. And you've got two of them sitting right in front of you.

Liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.

In a sense, all political use of Nietzsche is a perversion of his teaching. Nevertheless, what he said was read by political men and inspired them. He is as little responsible for fascism as Rousseau is responsible for Jacobinism. This means, however, that he is as much responsible for fascism as Rousseau was for Jacobinism.