I've only begun to reread this book.

[novapsyche]

Long before the appointed moment arrives, the election becomes the greatest and so to speak sole business preoccupying minds.

[...] For his part, the president is absorbed by the care of defending himself. He no longer governs in the interest of the state, but in that of his reelection. . . .

Intrigue and corruption are vices natural to elective governments. But when the head of state can be reelected, the vices spread indefinitely and compromise the very existence of the country. . . . [When] the head of state puts himself in the running, he borrows the force of the government for his own use.

[...] The plain citizen who uses reprehensible maneuvers to attain power can only harm public prosperity in an indirect manner; but if the representative of the executive power descends into the lists, the care of the government becomes a secondary interest to him; his principal interest is his reelection.

[...] It is impossible to consider the ordinary course of affairs in the United States without noticing that the desire to be reelected dominates the thoughts of the president; that the whole policy of his administration tends toward that point; that his least steps are subordinated to that object; that above all as the moment of the crisis [of the national election] approaches, individual interest is substituted in his mind for the general interest.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (2000 edition), pp. 127-29.

Comments

[mylastsigh.livejournal.com]

Amazing.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

More amazing is that this book was written before the Civil War.

[mylastsigh.livejournal.com]

I know :))))