So who's Frank Luntz? I didn't know. In his own words:
"I am nothing if not human," he says, breaking into a grin. "I'm super-human. I'm a human-and-one-fifth. My God, if I'm not careful, I'll have to go not to the big and tall but the big and bigger store!"The guy lives and breathes politics. His job is to get the political pulse of the nation. He's the
political consultant and TV fixture whose word has been law in Republican circles since he helped write the 1994 Contract With AmericaThat's the guy.
What he's hearing out there is bugging him. He believes that America is broken, and Obama had something to do with it. People have been let into the candy store and they don't want to come out. ( my words) America is spoiled rotten. ( my words again) Americans don't want to listen. ( I know, I've mentioned this before in connection to the Mahablog. )
Yeah, but it probably preceded Obama. The reason is that Obama had to get elected first before he could do damage. If the country wasn't already broken, he doesn't get elected.
I think it has been a long process. Bill Clinton couldn't have been elected president in an earlier time because he was a draft dodger and a philanderer. Something broke in the country back then, too.
It goes back at least to 1968, which I wrote about here. The country peaked at that time and hasn't returned to that level since.
Luntz tells politicians what they should tell the people because Luntz has got his finger on the pulse of what the people want to hear. Politicians seek his advice. But that implies that politicians only tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. There's a difference between being a politician and being a leader. There is no leadership.
The fear is that a real leader will not be heard. But when a real leader is disregarded and found to be correct, the people will turn to him. That's what happened with Winston Churchill.
Politics isn't a cure for a lack of guts.
Update:
A little more on this at Ace.
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