Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Power blinds you to your own blindness

There's a reason this joke has survived over a century: it captures something true about how power can make people worse at thinking. Not because politicians are uniquely stupid, but because the job itself creates blind spots. When you're surrounded by people who benefit from your decisions, when staff scrambles to execute whatever you say, when you rarely have to sit with real consequences—your ability to see clearly atrophies.

The thing is, this applies way beyond politics. It's why successful people sometimes become suddenly unreasonable, why managers stop listening to frontline employees, why anyone insulated from feedback starts making baffling calls. Power doesn't make you dumber exactly. It makes you defensive about ideas that threaten your position, more convinced of your own judgment, less curious about what you might be missing.

Twain's joke lands because it suggests the position itself does something to your mind. It's not entirely about who you are; it's partly about what the role encourages you to become. That's both depressing and oddly useful to recognize—because once you see the trap, you can at least try to escape it. The people worth following are usually the ones actively fighting this instinct.