Abstract
Political inferiors—whether hierarchical or collegial—are never to be underestimated as they can be the source of all sorts of threats to their ostensible superiors. For that reason, smart politicians never underestimate them, or ignore them, or pay them no attention. Yet keeping an eye on potential threats cannot be done by the politician on his or her own; help must be enlisted and delivered.
Greater love hath no man than this,
that he lay down his friends for his life.
Jeremy Thorpe, on Harold MacMillan’s
sacking of seven cabinet ministers
D. E. Butler and Anthony King, The General Election of 1964, in The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, Anthony Jay, ed. (Oxford: 1997), p. 364. More proof that every politician’s first concern is his or her own political survival.
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Notes
- 1.
The Downing Street Years, Harper Collins (New York: 1993), p. 840.
- 2.
Gospel of St. Mark 6:14-29.
- 3.
In New York Times, June 21, 1965, op. cit., Jay, p. 32.
- 4.
Electoral districts.
- 5.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Oxford University Press (New York: 1971), p. 145.
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Machiavelli, N. (2020). How the politician should deal with his political inferiors. In: The Politician. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39091-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39091-4_9
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