Political Quotes

“of the many novel ideas which we associate with the advent to office of Representative Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, none is more singular than his suggestion that we would all do well to read, or perhaps reread, ``The Federalist.'' As a New Yorker, I much applaud the proposal, and would presume on the Senate's time to invoke that venerable tradition in the context of the current debate over the proposed United States guarantee of Mexican debt. The most striking, at least to my mind, of those 85 essays by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay is the assertion that the proposed new Constitution was based on a ``new science of politics.'' If I may cite a commentary of my own, written some years ago, the establishment of the American Government in the latter part of the 18th century took its foremost distinction from the belief of those involved that they were acting upon scientific principles. Hamilton noted, in the ninth ``Federalist,'' that previous republics had had such stormy histories that republicanism had admittedly fallen somewhat into disrepute. This tendency could be overcome thanks to progress in political science: The science of politics * * * like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancient.…”