Zitat des Tages über Oberes Büro / High Office:
There is no easy way to ask serious-minded men and women who hold high office, and who have matters of state on their mind, 'Do you mind if I take a quick selfie?'
You have had indeed a fair trial. It is a shocking thing when a judge of your high office is shown to have betrayed the truth and his honor, and I sentence you to the penitentiary.
I will make a general statement that we have not had anything like the policy of holding people in high office responsible for their acts that I think we should.
You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.
High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
Perhaps life is actually more confusing and unknowable to an adult than a child, but grown-ups have learned to deceive themselves and act as if they understand what's going on; and some are elected to high office on the basis of their ability to create this impression.
It's healthy for government to be a kind of moral catalyst, using the bully pulpit of high office.
