Abstract
Once tasted, political life is almost always deemed delicious. But to sustain that feeling requires re-election sooner or later, and to get re-elected the name of the politician (and generally very little else about him) needs to be known. Thus, between elections the sole task of each and every politician is to promote recognition of his or her name. Period. And that is in fact quite a feat, if it can be managed, because the average citizen knows next to nothing—including the name—of the person who represents him or her at any level of government.
To choose that which will bring him the most credit with the least
trouble, has hitherto been the sole care of the statesman in office.
Henry Taylor
The Statesman (1836), in The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, Anthony Jay, ed. (Oxford: 1997), p. 358. Dear Reader, after the preceding twenty-one chapters, this can come as no surprise!
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- 1.
Gettysburg Address.
- 2.
Attributed, op. cit. Jay, p. 103.
- 3.
William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke (1923), ibid., p. 301.
- 4.
Lord Riddell, diary, April 23, 1919, ibid., p. 229.
- 5.
Author’s recollection.
- 6.
Alexander K. McClure, Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories (1904), op. cit. Jay, p. 227.
- 7.
“Theory and Practice” (1990), ibid., p. 297.
- 8.
Great Contemporaries (1937), ibid., p. 89.
- 9.
The original refrain was: “Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux.” (Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.) See The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press (New York: 1979), p. 163.
- 10.
Walden, Chapter 1, “Economy”.
- 11.
Discourses, 2.10.
- 12.
The Economist, December 4, 1875, op. cit. Jay, p. 27. The same point was made more recently (2005) by Harry Frankfurt in On Bullshit (pp. 63–64), speaking of “the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs”.
- 13.
The reference is to an American marketing practice common from the 1930s to the 1950s. It involved parents collecting and submitting (as proof of purchase) a set number of cereal box tops in return for some premium of dubious value that their children were avid to possess. For example, a tiny model racing car.
- 14.
Speech at the Democratic National Convention, August 18, 1956, op. cit. Jay, p. 350.
- 15.
In Listener, June 10, 1982, ibid., p. 104.
- 16.
The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli, George Bull, transl., Penguin (London: 1995), p. 10.
- 17.
Of sound mind.
- 18.
And no doubt, dear reader, replaced by newer technology by the time you read this.
- 19.
Op. cit. Machiavelli, p. 46.
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Machiavelli, N. (2020). How the politician should behave between elections. In: The Politician. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39091-4_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39091-4_22
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