John Adams on Electioneering
Amidst preoccupation with visitors and final exams, here's a word from John Adams to help us keep some perspective on electioneering. It comes from a letter written late in his life, quoted in David McCullough's John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 591.
[Note: You must imagine the literal source of each metaphorical vehicle in the first paragraph, given the reality of horse travel in a fall season of the first decade of the 19th Century, when a journey between Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., could take weeks. The tenor of the metaphors, of course, still applies in the age of Beemer and chartered jet.]
"Our electioneering racers have started for the prize. Such a whipping and spurring and huzzaing! Oh what rare sport it will be! Through thick and thin, through mire and dirt, through bogs and fens and sloughs, dashing and splashing and crying out, the devil take the hindmost.
"How long will it be possible that honor, truth or virtue should be respected among a people who are engaged in such a quick and perpetual succession of such profligate collisions and conflicts?"
[Note: You must imagine the literal source of each metaphorical vehicle in the first paragraph, given the reality of horse travel in a fall season of the first decade of the 19th Century, when a journey between Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., could take weeks. The tenor of the metaphors, of course, still applies in the age of Beemer and chartered jet.]
"Our electioneering racers have started for the prize. Such a whipping and spurring and huzzaing! Oh what rare sport it will be! Through thick and thin, through mire and dirt, through bogs and fens and sloughs, dashing and splashing and crying out, the devil take the hindmost.
"How long will it be possible that honor, truth or virtue should be respected among a people who are engaged in such a quick and perpetual succession of such profligate collisions and conflicts?"
posted by G.Rap | 10:04 PM
1 Comments:
The more things change, the more they stay the same. People are still people (and politicians, with rare exception, are still politicians). Beware the man (or woman) who so desperately wants to get elected that he (or she) is willing to do anything to win. They often lose sight of their original goal (or never had one in the first place, other than simply getting elected).
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