machine politician
English edit
Noun edit
machine politician (plural machine politicians)
- (US) A politician who belongs to a small clique that controls a political party for private rather than public ends.
- 2021, Mark Lawrence Schrad, Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition[1], Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 413:
- It wasn't that these ward bosses were universally bad men, but the qualities that made for a successful machine politician or boss were the opposite of those that made for an honest public servant.