Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.
Interpretation
Political ignorance leads to unrealistic expectations of politicians, resulting in constant disappointment.
In this quote, George Will argues that the lack of understanding among the electorate about the complexities of politics and governance causes them to have unreasonable expectations of their leaders. This ignorance fosters a cycle of disappointment, as voters mistakenly believe that politicians possess the power to solve all issues or control circumstances in a way that aligns with their desires.
In practice
During a political discussion about voter engagement at a public forum.
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?
Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other
The local interest of a State ought in every case to give way to the interests of the Union. For when a sacrifice of one or the other is necessary, the former becomes only an apparent, partial interest, and should yield, on the principle that the smaller good ought never to oppose the greater good.
Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
Having excessive power in the hands of one country meant the fate of the world was too dependent on what happened in that one country.
Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.
It was clear, for example, in 1988 that the political process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant to represent.
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