Why They Really Run

A nicely written essay from Michael Kinsley..the concept of keeping one's ambitions under wraps seems to be a peculiar cultural norm applicable to not only politicians but to all of us....

Ladies and gentlemen, they are running because they are ambitious. No, really, they are. You probably suspected as much. And yet you would abandon any candidate who dared to admit this, or at least they all believe that you would. We all are told at our high school graduations to be ambitious, then for the rest of our lives it becomes a shameful secret. Ambition can take many forms. Four decades ago, Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, created a sensation with a book called Making It that revealed how even intellectuals are ambitious. But the purest form of ambition is political ambition, because it represents a desire to rule over other people.
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The one sin for which redemption and forgiveness are not available is ambition. And yet it's the one sin we know they are all guilty of.